


paper rings (and picture frames and dirty dreams)

by blake0tyler



Series: paper rings [1]
Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Everyone Is In Denial, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, This is ridiculous, my favorite trope, oblivious Kelley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-10-12 15:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20566280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blake0tyler/pseuds/blake0tyler
Summary: “People apparently think we are together,” Kelley says, ignoring the slight quiver in her voice. “I don’t know why, but it seems to be a thing. So, now, I’m thinking we should use that thing to our advantage. Power couple the fuck out of it, and then use it to get Chris and Tobin to admit they want the same thing—with each other.”Emily’s eyes are bright and teasing. “So, you’re saying you want to be my girlfriend.”“Fake girlfriend,” Kelley corrects, trying to ignore the way her heartrate spikes—must be the fucking coffee.//[ in which Kelley and Emily pretend to date in order to get Christen and Tobin to date. ]





	1. I.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: 
> 
> This might be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever worked on, but I promised my best friend I’d write her a Kelley/Emily fic, so there you go.
> 
> I’ve been insanely busy lately, which is why it’s taking me longer to work on my more emotionally demanding fics — *cough* the preath possessiveness fic you’ve been requesting *cough* — so updates might be slow! I’ll do what I can, though! 
> 
> Hope you all have a great day today x

_(darling, you’re the one I want) and I hate accidents, except when we went from friends to this_

_paper rings – taylor swift _

:::

“You know, one of these days, I’m seriously going to murder Christen.”

In her own defense, Kelley is day drunk on the last day of freedom before training (and maybe one too many mojitos).

She’s also close to developing a serious heat stroke from the California sun, and considering the fact that she’s not usually a very violent person—outside of the soccer pitch, at least—it might be a bit of a crazy statement. 

But in her own defense—

She’s been leaning on the edge of this hotel swimming pool for at least twenty minutes already, watching the scene play out in front of her with an increasing sense of fascination mixed with disgust, and to be honest, it’s gotten to the point where she just can’t handle it anymore.

If she watches Christen throw her head back laughing at one of Tobin’s dumb soccer jokes one more time, she’s seriously going to—

“But is it worth the prison sentence, though?” Emily says, cutting in. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Kell, I want to strangle them, too. Whatever Tobin is saying is giving me a crazy amount of secondhand embarrassment. But what would we do with the bodies?”

Kelley splashes water at her. “Stop it. I’m serious.”

“So am I!” Emily counters, grinning even wider. “But think about it. We might be able to get rid of Tobin without getting caught. But Press… Press is way too attractive. Half the world would come looking for her if she went missing.”

Kelley scoffs, because that’s kind of true—annoyingly true, actually. “Whatever. They’re driving me insane and I want to murder them.”

She watches with narrowed eyes as Tobin leans in close, pretending to brush the slightest smear of sunscreen off of Christen’s nose as a poor excuse to touch her cheek. She does it with a soft sort of smile, almost like she still can’t quite believe that Christen is standing in front of her in a black one-piece, smiling back. Tobin’s hand lingers, and Christen blushes, and Kelley rolls her eyes.

“It’s like they’re fourteen years old and don’t know how to ask each other out,” she complains. 

Emily laughs, then says, “We should do it for them.”

“Yeah, right.” Kelley files that away as the worst idea in the entire world. “They’re way too scared to go out for real. I’ll bet you, they’ll still be doing all this awkward flirting when they’re sixty years old.”

Emily just splashes more water at her face.

“You know, you’re weirdly obsessed with this, Kell” she says, then, a slow smile around her lips.

Kelley begins to protest.

She’s _not_—

She’s _annoyed_, is what she is—

But Emily is already grabbing her hand and dragging her through the water to the other side of the pool to order her a third (or fourth or fifth?) mojito, and Kelley can’t be bothered to spend another minute of her time on Tobin and Christen’s non-relationship relationship developments.

:::

Later, though—when she’s feeling less intoxicated and less violent, when she’s softened quite a bit to the way that Christen hasn’t stopped smiling all day, when she’s lying in bed thinking it over, thinking of the way Emily’s eyes had been really fucking blue in the bright afternoon sunlight, of the look on her face when she’d said _we should do it for them_—

Later, Kelley thinks it might not be the worst idea in the world after all.

Sure, it needs a little bit of work.

But, in theory, it’s not bad.

:::

“I’ve decided we need to speed this up,” she says, the next morning, when they’re standing in front of the coffee machine in the hotel conference room where they’ll have their team meeting later. They’ve got a friendly against Canada coming up in a few days and today is open training.

“Speed what up?” Emily says, grabbing a cup.

Kelley leans in closer. “Tobin and Christen,” she mumbles, effectively drowning the words out with the noise from the coffee machine. “You were right; we have to do it for them. They’re too dumb to do anything about it themselves. And if we don’t intervene, it’s going to take forever, which will only be more agonizing for us in the end.”

Emily grins, her face close. “You want to play matchmaker?”

Something about the way she can suddenly count the light freckles on the bridge of Emily’s nose, makes Kelley lose track of what she was saying for a second. She shakes herself out of it quickly.

“Yes,” she says. “All they need is a little bit of a push.”

Emily glances over her shoulder to where Christen and Tobin are already sitting at one of the tables; Christen animatedly speaking about something that has Tobin smiling at her like the rest of the team isn’t even in the room.

“What do you think?” Kelley presses on. “Are you in?”

Emily grins. “What kind of question is that even? Of course I’m in.”

:::

The sun is hot and blazing when they make their way onto the field.

This never gets old, Kelley thinks; to see how many people love what they’re doing; to watch the little boys and girls with their O’Hara shirts; all the USWNT fans with their flags, their posters, their signs.

She wraps her arm around Emily’s shoulder, shaking her a little, pointing at the signs she likes and feeling happy, light and excited to train. Emily’s arm is tight around her waist; and she’s smiling just as wide. 

They’ve got a plan to focus on, though.

“You take Chris,” she mumbles to Emily during warm-up. “I’ll take Tobin.”

Emily grins. “And when are you going to take me, honey?”

“Fuck off.” Kelley shoves her, ignoring the weird way her stomach flips. “This is serious. We have to focus.”

“Okay, okay,” Emily says, winking at Kelley before she takes off, running over to where Christen is stretching.

Kelley takes a breath, then turns around. She doesn’t really have an excuse to go over to Tobin, so she does the first thing she can think of, which is kick one of the stray soccer balls in front of her a little too hard, making it soar through the air until it hits Tobin’s back.

“Whoops!” she yells, “My bad!”

Tobin, when she realizes it’s Kelley’s ball, looks ready to kill her. But Kelley ignores the scowl, running over and saying a little off-handedly, “What a great day, am I right?”

At that, Tobin frowns. “Hm?”

“I’m just saying,” Kelley says, trying to sound casual. “It just seems like a beautiful day to play some soccer, hang out with friends, spend it with the people we like…”

Tobin passes the ball back, but Kelley quickly kicks it off into nowhere, making her way over until she’s standing next to Tobin, instead of walking back to where she came from.

“Speaking of which…” Kelley says. “Don’t you think someone is looking particularly good today?”

At that, Tobin loses focus. “What?”

Kelley nods over in the direction of Emily and Christen. “I don’t know what it is,” she says, voice light. “What it is that has her smiling like that—the sun, the new haircut, someone on her mind maybe?—but I think she’s been looking really good lately.”

Tobin’s face is very confused. “Uh… are you—” she mumbles, clearly very lost and not knowing how to respond properly. “Who—what…” 

And then—because Kelley is a genius—she takes Tobin’s ball and kicks it all the way across the field to Emily and Christen.

“Oh wow, sorry,” she says, not sorry at all. “That went way over. I’m clearly really out of practice. Maybe you can go get it?”

Tobin’s face is angry now. “Kelley, what the fuck—”

“Or, even better, let’s both go get it,” Kelley says, already crossing the field.

Emily smirks a little when they’ve made her way over and says, “Beautiful pass, Kell. Right on target.”

Christen looks mostly confused, but her expression changes as soon as she catches sight of Tobin running up behind Kelley. It goes all soft and smiley, and _ugh—_

This is annoying, but also cute.

“Did you lose your ball?” Christen asks Tobin with a bit of a teasing smile.

All of Tobin’s anger is gone instantly. “Kelley kicked it,” she says, before stepping closer to Christen. “How’s it going? How’s your ankle? Still sensitive?”

They get lost in conversation so easily that Kelley is almost surprised.

“See?” she says under her breath to Emily. “It’s already working.”

Emily looks slightly skeptical, but smiles, anyway. “If you say so.”

“Em,” Kelley says, insistent. “Just look at them.”

Emily doesn’t look at them. Instead, she pushes Kelley’s shoulder teasingly. “You’re in way over your head.” 

Kelley pushes her shoulder back. “Just wait,” she says. “Promise you they’ll be together in no time.”

:::

The thing with open practice, is that it’s _public_. Which means a lot of media coverage, a lot of people with cell phones—a lot of… content.

Kelley is not dumb.

She knows that their fans can get excited, that they want to be involved, that sometimes, they speculate about things. It has happened before. With Ali and Ashlyn. With her and Alex. Things will be caught on camera and then posted online and mostly Kelley stays away from it; not because it bothers her, but because she tries to keep her professional and her private life separate wherever she can.

But at the end of the day, to an extent their personal lives are their professional lives, and people say things about them—sometimes true and sometimes false.

Usually, Kelley doesn’t even bother looking into it.

But tonight…

Tonight, she’s curious.

It’s late and she’s lost in her phone and she’s already scrolled through her Instagram feed multiple times—liked a few selfies here and there, commented on Lindsey’s picture of her and Moe and Crystal fighting for the same ball, smiled at the photographer’s shots of Tobin and Christen passing the ball back and forth, sitting on the field together—and she knows that if she’d scroll down in the comments…

Before she can let her curiosity get the best of her, though, something else catches her attention.

The notification pops up on the top of her screen: _emilysonnett_ has tagged you in a post.

She doesn’t even waste a second, clicks on it right away.

It’s a picture of the two of them, taken by one of the professional photographers. Emily is smirking and Kelley is clearly laughing at something she just said. Their elbows are brushing and Emily’s smile is a little dazzling, captured beautifully, Kelley thinks.

In the background of the picture, Christen and Tobin are passing the ball back and forth to one another, but Kelley isn’t looking at them, can’t seem to drag her eyes away from the way Emily’s shorts have ridden up her left leg, from the way her own body is angled completely into Emily’s space, almost like—

She scrolls down, away from the picture, blocking whatever thought that was.

The caption reads: _open training for my side career as @kelleyohara’s personal stand-up comedian._

Kelley has to bite down on her bottom lip—that’s how much she wants to smile.

The comments are rolling in right away. Kelley scrolls through them, smirking a little when she sees people noticing Chris and Tobin in the back.

But then—

There’s something else.

At first, it’s not very obvious.

Some fan account has written _goals _with a heart emoji and a soccer ball emoji next to it.

Then, there’s a variety of people saying things like _looking good together _and _you love to see it _and _the o’hara era_.

Kelley’s heart has started racing.

Then, it gets real.

The more often she refreshes the page, the more comments like _omg so’hara _and _hottest couple in the world _and _get someone who looks at you the way @kelleyohara looks at @emilysonnett_ are flashing across her screen.

Kelley drops the phone on her bed.

She’s blushing.

She’s blushing very hard.

With shaking fingers, she picks it up again, staring at the photo for another minute; Christen and Tobin in the back, her and Emily in the front.

And then—

The idea starts slow, barely brushing against the surface of her consciousness. As soon as she considers it, though, there’s no way out.

God.

She really _is _a genius.

:::

“I’ve got a proposal,” she says, in lieu of a greeting when Emily opens the hotel room door the next morning.

“Cool, but can we do it after coffee?” Emily says, yawning, dressed in sweatpants and a soft white hoodie that Kelley kind of wants to wrap her arms around.

Kelley ignores her—and that thought.

“We’re going to date,” she says instead.

Emily’s eyebrows rise up. But then, she smirks. “I mean, generally, these things are decided on a consensual basis, Kell, but I have to say, I like your enthusiasm—”

“No, you idiot,” Kelley interrupts, before Emily can say anything else. “Not for real. We’re just going to date in order to get Christen and Tobin to date.”

Emily blinks slowly, leans with her shoulder against the wall, a small frown on her face that Kelley thinks is kind of cute—

“Okay…” Emily says, dragging the word out. “Either you’re not making any sense or I seriously do need coffee first. Probably both.”

Kelley huffs—impatient. “Fine, fine, whatever, grab your stuff. I’m taking you out for breakfast.”

Emily smirks. “Oh, so we _are_ doing the dating thing.”

“That’s not—”

“Again, consent is usually—”

“Em, let’s _go_.”

:::

They end up at a little place around the corner of the hotel. They’ll have to be back for training later, but it’s early enough that there aren’t many people around yet, and they can take the hour or so to drink coffee and wake up a little bit together. 

“So, let me get this straight,” Emily says, after listening to Kelley’s explanation. “No pun intended, of course—”

Kelley rolls her eyes.

Emily smirks, before continuing, with her mouth full of avocado toast, “You went online last night, and now you’ve somehow gone from _I will murder Tobin and Christen the next time I see them _to _let’s try and play matchmaker for an afternoon _to _we’re actually going to pretend we are a couple so we can trick them into double dating us. _All in the span of thirty-six hours.” 

“Swallow your food before you speak.”

Emily ignores her, crumbs on her lips as she adds with a grin, “If you wanted to date me, Kell, all you had to do was ask.” 

For some reason, it rushes heat up to Kelley’s cheeks. But rather than taking the bait, she takes another sip of her coffee, before saying, “Your selective listening skills are really driving me insane. I will explain it one more time. Try and pay attention if you can.” She puts her cup down. “People apparently think we are together.” She ignores the slight quiver in her voice, quickly speaking over it. “I don’t know why, but it seems to be a thing. So, now, I’m thinking that we should use that thing to our advantage. Power couple the fuck out of it, and then use it to get Chris and Tobin to admit they want the same thing—with each other.”

Emily’s eyes are bright and teasing. “So, you’re saying you want to be my girlfriend.”

“_Fake _girlfriend,” Kelley corrects, trying to ignore the way her heartrate spikes—must be the fucking coffee. “We’re not actually going to date. We’re just going to pretend we’re in that awkward first stage where we really like each other but haven’t, like, fully admitted it or whatever, and we still need emotional support from our best friends—Tobin and Christen. So, then we drag them along on our dates until they’re forced to admit their undying love for one another.” She leans forward. “I swear I’ve thought it out! It’s a good idea.”

Emily is leaning back in her chair, looking back at Kelley with a small smile, something in her eyes that Kelley can’t quite place; something slow and warm, and maybe the tiniest little bit frustrated—though none of that makes sense. 

“It’s not a good idea,” Emily says, then.

“What—no, Em, let me explain—”

“It’s a _great _idea,” Emily says, smile breaking through on her face. “When do we start?”


	2. II.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: 
> 
> This is an au in which Kelley did not kiss her girlfriend at the end of the World Cup (aka one of the greatest moments in history). It's not journalism—it’s fiction, friends. I’m writing about these people as if they’re characters, and in this particular story, these particular characters are going to pretend they fell in love during the WWC. 
> 
> Hope everyone has a great day :)
> 
> Let me know what you think!

“I think I’m in love with Emily.”

Christen pauses, her cup of coffee halfway to her mouth as she stares at Kelley from across the small table between them. The most surprising thing, Kelley notes, is that Christen doesn’t start laughing hysterically right away. All she does is blink slowly a few times and then she says with a slight frown, “_Emily_?”

“I know,” Kelley rushes to say. “Believe me, I was surprised too! But love is love, you know? Couldn’t stop it if we tried.”

“No—” Christen cuts in. “I mean, who’s Emily? Which Emily?”

Kelley stares.

“Sonnett,” she says after a moment. “Emily Sonnett.”

Christen kind of chokes on her coffee. Kelley can feel heat slowly make its way up her neck. Christen coughs, putting the cup down. “_Sonny_?”

Kelley feels defensive right away. “What?” She frowns. “She’s really great, you know.”

“No, no, of course,” Christen rushes. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. When did this… when did—” She blinks hard. “Since when?”

Kelley takes a breath, feeling her smile return slowly. This, she’s prepared for. “France,” she says easily. “You know, winning that trophy really did something to me. Made me realize how important it is to go after what you want.” She looks pointedly at Christen. “You know what I mean?”

Christen’s face is still half shocked. “I guess,” she says after a second and it’s almost like Kelley can _see _her thinking. “So, are you guys… like… dating now?”

“Uh,” Kelley says. “A little bit.”

“A little bit?” Christen frowns. “What does that even mean?”

“We’re keeping it casual.” Kelley is trying to ignore the fact that she is full on blushing now for god knows what reason. “On the low.” She can do this—she can play it cool. “You know, just figuring it out. Just a few dates here and there. Speaking of—” She leans forward on the table. “We’re going out for drinks tonight, do you maybe want to join?”

Christen’s eyes go wide. “Me? Join you and Sonny for drinks?”

“Yeah,” Kelley says, shrugging. “Or, I mean, if you want to, you could invite someone along. Like, Lindsey. Or… or Tobin.” She smirks at the way Christen’s face changes instantly. “Yeah, ask Tobin! She and Em get along really well.”

Christen’s either still too shocked or suddenly too flustered to really protest it. She tries to give Kelley some half excuse about training tomorrow morning, but Kelley waves it off.

“Come on,” she says, “It’s just a few drinks with your friends.” She reaches to grab her phone from her jacket pocket. “Shall I text Tobin?”

“No, I’ll text her,” Christen says quickly.

Kelley smirks—and just like that, they’re going out tonight.

:::

She messages Emily later: _My work here is done_.

It’s after practice, and they’re all back in their hotel rooms. Kelley is rooming with Mal and Emily is rooming with Lindsey, and Kelley is pretty sure that Emily said she still wanted to go for a quick run after practice to cool down. Still, it only takes about a minute to get a response.

_are we like speaking about u ordering us pizza like you promised (in which case yes kelley i’ll be there in 10) or the even more noble work of bullying the youth of america (aka mal and rose) out of your room so we can eat pizza AND watch b99 just the two of us (in which case I’ll be there in 5)_

Kelley snorts.

_You suck_, she types back, grinning. _YOU are the one who promised to order us pizza. _She doesn’t wait for Emily’s response, just types back: _Obviously I’m speaking about the fact that you and me are going out with Tobin and Christen tonight thanks to my brilliant matchmaking skills._

Emily’s response is quick: _damn way to make a girl’s dreams come true_

For some reason, it makes Kelley blush.

She decides to ignore it; opts instead for texting Emily the address of the bar they’re going to later to which Emily types back: _linds just went out so if u want to u can come over here and i’ll order pizza._

Kelley texts back: _Sure, I’ll go get ready, see you in a bit._

Emily shoots back: _don’t make me wait 2 long, _and it takes everything Kelley’s got to ignore the way her stomach swoops.

:::

She feels overdressed when Emily opens the hotel room door in jeans and sneakers and a black hoodie.

Instantly, Emily’s eyes go wide. “You didn’t say it was a _fancy _place.”

Kelley exhales sharply, pushes past her and into the room. “I texted you the address for a reason. Is this—” She halts in front of the full length mirror, suddenly annoyingly self-conscious. She drags her gaze over the tight leather pants she’s wearing, the lipstick, the thin white top that shows off her shoulders, that makes her feel feminine and cool at the same time. “Fuck, is this too much?”

“No, no,” Emily rushes to say. “You look really—you look—”

She runs a hand over the back of her neck, and the gesture makes Kelley feel even _more _self-conscious, but in a weird way; almost good.

But then, instead of finishing the sentence, Emily whistles low under her breath and begins humming the tune of some obscene song she’s been obsessed with recently, and Kelley rolls her eyes, feeling the tension leave her body instantly, says, “Whatever. Where is the pizza?” 

Emily shoves a box at her and Kelley kicks off her heels, dropping herself down onto Emily’s bed and reaching for a slice, her lipstick be damned.

“I’m changing, though,” Emily says, after a moment. “I’m not about to look ridiculous when you look like _that_.”

Kelley’s about to protest that it doesn’t even matter anymore, that they don’t have that much time before they need to leave. But before she can say something Emily is dragging her hoodie over her head and throwing it on top of her suit case in the corner, and Kelley—

Well, fuck.

This really shouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. She’s seen Emily in a bra a thousand times already, has seen her in _less _than a bra a dozen times or so as well, and yet—

It’s got to be the date thing, she decides.

It’s got to be the fact that they’re going on a date—a _fake_ date, she corrects mentally.

It’s got to be the fact that Kelley is all dressed up, feels pretty and self-aware; the fact that she just wasn’t prepared for Emily stripping in front of her in any sort of context that isn’t soccer.

That’s all there is to it.

She tears her eyes away from the smooth pale skin of Emily’s waist, from the freckles on her shoulder blades, busying herself instead with logging onto Netflix on the hotel’s tv so she can start an episode of _Brooklyn Nine-Nine _already. Her fingers feel a little shaky on the remote.

“I’m starting without you,” she mumbles, forcing some semblance of control back into her voice.

Emily hums something back, before grabbing a few things from her suitcase and disappearing in the bathroom.

When she returns, Kelley is already halfway through the episode, doesn’t look up, until Emily clears her throat and says, “This better?”

And then she can’t really look away.

Emily is wearing a black jumpsuit that she’s been hiding in her suitcase between the mesh shorts and the tank tops all this time apparently. Her hair is down and she’s pulling a little on the fabric at her hip, before doing a sort of exaggerated model pose to mask the fact that she—like Kelley—is clearly feeling a little self-conscious.

“What do you think?” Emily says, “Would you date me, Kell?”

It makes Kelley’s throat go dry.

Emily looks so good that it’s almost unfair.

She is struggling to reply, so instead, she grabs a pillow and tries to smack Emily’s side with it, trying to hide how affected she really is. “Fake date,” is what she gets out eventually. “I’m fake dating you.”

Emily grins. “Okay. Sure.” She drops down next to Kelley on the bed and grabs a slice of pizza from the box. “Catch me up on the episode.”

“Just shut up and watch. You’ll catch on soon enough.”

Emily takes a big bite of her pizza slice. “Always so bossy.”

“Seriously, Em—chewing would help.”

Emily laughs and Kelley feels her whole body heat up at the sound. She can feel this involuntary small smile curl its way around her lips. Emily smacks the pillow against Kelley’s thigh and says, though a mouthful of pizza, “Okay, mother.”

It’s early in the evening. They’re all dressed up, eating pizza sprawled out across Emily’s bed, watching _Brooklyn Nine-Nine _but mostly bantering over it, and Kelley doesn’t really want to leave the hotel at all.

:::

“So, have we kissed yet?”

They’re in the Uber on the way to the bar and Kelley’s heart skips at the question. “What?”

“In this scenario,” Emily says. “What’s our thing? Are we, like, pining lovers who have been waiting for the other to make a move for years? Did we get into a drunken friends-with-benefits kind of situation during the world cup and are we banging that into a relationship now—”

Kelley abruptly feels like she can’t breathe.

“—Did we go out behind everyone’s back?” Emily continues, undisturbed. “You know, have we kissed yet?” 

“Uh—” Kelley has to clear her throat. “Yeah, I—uh—I see what you mean.” She licks at her bottom lip. “Well, I told Christen that it’s all pretty low key.”

Emily turns to look at Kelley, arches an eyebrow. “Is that a yes or a no to the kissing?”

“I also told her I’m in love with you.”

There’s a silence.

Kelley looks up to find Emily’s eyes dark and flickering, only lit up every few seconds by the traffic lights along the road. Still, Kelley can see the shift on her face; the way her eyebrows arch just ever so slightly, the way her mouth pulls, the way she moves just the slightest bit closer, before saying, with a little bit of a teasing tilt to her voice, “So, a definite yes to the kissing, then.” 

“I had to improvise, okay?” Kelley doesn’t know why her voice sounds like this, breathless and slightly edgy, almost defensive. “I had to come up with something quick and this was the first thing I thought of.”

Emily’s smile curls its way around Kelley’s spine. “That you’re low key in love with me? That’s the first thing you thought of?”

“It’s part of the game plan,” Kelley mumbles. “Christen and Tobin have been so infuriating, I had to find a way into the—”

“Hey.” Emily’s hand is on Kelley’s thigh, just like that; thumb stroking over the leather in a way that is distracting and comforting at the same time. “Stop worrying. I’ll be low key in love with you any day.”

It makes Kelley inhale sharply.

She’s silent for just a second, trying to fight the confusing urge of wanting to push Emily’s hand off her leg and interlace their fingers at the same time.

“Yeah, we kissed,” she says, then, finally. “I guess we’ve kissed quite a few times, already; some of it when we were drunk, some of it when we were not so drunk. At this point, I’m pretty sure I’ve had feelings for you for a while but I didn’t want it to ruin our friendship. You’ve been a little more confident about it, which is why we’re sort of going out now. And the thing is—well… it feels like— I mean, it’s like…” She forces herself to finish the sentence. “It’s, like, I’m pretty sure I’m going to fall in love with you, you know? Like, sooner than I’m ready for. Because there’s all this energy and tension and I _want _it, I really do, but I’ve also just been—well, it’s all just happening very quickly. So, that’s why I need Christen to, to calm me down, or whatever. We’ve kissed. But we haven’t—” Kelley is praying that the lack of light in the Uber is hiding her blush. “We haven’t, like, _banged it into a relationship_ yet.”

Emily is quiet, her hand gone still on Kelley’s thigh.

Kelley feels her chest rise and fall rapidly with how short her breathing is. She laughs a little to try and shake it loose. “Anyway, that’s the story. Got it? Any questions?”

Emily takes a second too long to answer, but then she smirks. “I got it.”

“Good,” Kelley says. The car is slowing to a stop. “I think we’re here.”

Emily’s smile, when they get out of the Uber, has turned a little softer. “Let’s show them what it looks like, yeah?”

“What it looks like?”

“Come on,” Emily says, instead of answering the question. She holds out her hand for Kelley to take. “Let’s date.”

:::

Tobin and Christen might as well not need any of their help.

When Kelley and Emily make their way into the bar, they’re already at one of the high top tables in the back, sitting impossibly close to each other, and looking so wrapped up in each other’s space that Kelley feels like she’s intruding the moment she spots them.

“Jesus,” she mumbles under their breath. “Let’s go back to the hotel and finish B99, leave them to it.”

Emily laughs, pulls her along through the crowds. “And miss out on the chance to show you and your leather pants off to my insufferable teammates? No fucking way.”

Kelley tries to brush off the comment, but is still thinking about it when they get to the table, is still replaying it in her mind, barely misses the moment Christen looks up, smiles wide and beautiful, before wrapping her arms around Kelley’s shoulders in a quick greeting.

“Hey,” Christen says, “Wow, you look great.”

That pulls Kelley back to reality. She smirks a little. “So do you, Pressi.”

Christen’s got her hair down, wild and curly, is wearing something black and short that fits her body perfectly.

“Thanks.” Christen takes the compliment with a smile, before hugging Emily, too, while Kelley greets Tobin.

The whole thing feels weird in the sense that they don’t really do this very often—or at _all_, really—but it’s not necessarily bad. These are her friends, Kelley reminds herself. She knows these people better than anyone else. The fact that she’s feeling slightly nervous for some reason shouldn’t matter when she’s got this kind of company.

Tobin makes some off-handed comment about soccer practice today that has them all grinning, and Kelley’s about to reply with something smart. But then Emily’s hand touches the small of her back.

“What can I get you, babe?”

Kelley instantly feels shaky.

For a moment, she’s too overwhelmed to say something, but this—

This is why they’re here.

She smiles back sweetly. “Whatever you’re feeling.”

And then—

Because she can’t stand the fact that Emily has seemed to have the upper hand in terms of confidence all evening, she leans forward and presses her mouth to Emily’s cheek in a quick kiss. “Thanks.” 

When she turns back, Tobin and Christen are both looking a little wide-eyed. Emily, if she is shocked in any way, does a great way of hiding it. She makes her way over to the bar and Kelley smiles a small smile, one that only curls wider when she catches the look that passes between Tobin and Christen—something kind of shy and sweet and soft.

“So,” she says, “Pretty fancy place, huh?”

:::

Everything is better once they’re three drinks in.

Kelley has easily fallen into one of her favorite past-time activities: embarrassing Christen with stories about college.

“So, then I get a Facebook message at six in the morning, right—” she’s saying, ignoring the way Christen is pulling at her wrist to try and get her to stop talking. “Yes, you heard that right. Facebook. And all it says is _don’t know where I am come save me please_, and of course, it’s little Pressi over here—” Kelley tries to grab Christen’s hand. “Who is god knows where on campus, probably still half-drunk from her one night of partying, waking up in some stranger’s bed, no cash on her and her phone dead. But because it’s Pressi, and she’s smart—”

“Kell, stop talking—”

“—because she is smart, she designs an escape strategy. She just grabs the phone of the girl with the nose piercing who is right next to her, naked and asleep—”

“She didn’t have a nose piercing!”

“—_logs onto Facebook—_”

“You’re telling this all wrong!”

“—and then messages me!” Kelley smirks. “Which, you know, is fine. Nothing all that crazy. I use Facebook. I’m a good friend. So, I tell her to send the location. I pick her up. We drive to soccer practice, Press hungover as hell.” Christen groans. “It’s not until later, though, that all of us realize that Press forgot a tiny little detail in her beautiful plan.”

Tobin grins. “I can see where this is going.”

“No,” Emily cuts in, eyes wide. “Tell me Christen is smarter than this. She did not—”

“She forgot to log out.” Kelley smirks, while Christen hides her face in her hands. “Of course she did. So, all afternoon, all of us had the pleasure of seeing this girl with a nose piercing post selfies on Christen’s wall from her own freaking account, saying all these things about what a perfect night it had been and how much she couldn’t wait for the next time.”

Emily laughs so hard that Kelley feels her whole chest swell with it. Tobin is all smiles, shaking her head and knocking her hand against Christen’s as a sign of comfort, while Christen mumbles weakly, “She did _not _have a nose piercing.”

“Like that even matters,” Kelley says.

She wants to say something else—wants to rush into another story about that time they played North Carolina, one that Tobin surely must remember, too—but before she can say anything, Emily’s leaning in close, her breath hot against Kelley’s ear as she whispers, “Five bucks Tobin will have a nose piercing by the end of next week.”

Kelley smiles so hard that she has to bite down on her bottom lip to stop it.

It feels like her head is spinning; for the most part, it’s the heat of the bar and the alcohol percentage in her drinks, but it’s also the fact that Emily’s voice this close to her ear is giving her shivers, the fact that she can feel Emily’s fingers pressing into her side, stroking softly, the fact that she’s been trying to distract herself with telling stories, but that all this time, she’s been so hyper aware of every single thing Em has done or said—

“Bet you five bucks they’ve kissed by the end of this evening,” she whispers back, reveling in the way Emily shifts even closer into her space to hear her, the way her eyes are so bright in the light of the bar when she turns back and grins.

:::

“Are you trying to dislocate my elbow?”

Kelley pulls harder on Emily’s hand. “Shut up.”

“You know what this looks like, right?”

“What?”

Emily catches up, creating some slack in their arms. She’s grinning—this smug little smile that drives Kelley absolutely insane. “Two people going to the bathroom together. You know it looks like we’re going to fuck, right?”

_Jesus._

Kelley almost walks right into the door.

“Sorry, I mean _make love_—” Emily says behind her. “It looks like we’re going to the bathroom together to make love. I’m a little drunk.”

“Em,” she forces out. “I said, shut up.”

She pushes the door open, still keeping their fingers linked together. There’s no queue and there are several independent stalls. For some reason, she doesn’t really want to let go of Emily’s hand, but Kelley also knows, rationally, that pulling Emily into one of the stalls with her in the context of what she’s just said, is the stupidest thing Kelley could possible want.

Doesn’t mean she doesn’t want it.

“Stay here,” she says. “I’m just going to pee.”

Emily nods. “Okay.”

The bathroom is just as fancy as the rest of the restaurant. In the quiet of the stall, Kelley feels like her mind calms a little bit. But when she exits again, Kelley is met with Emily leaning back against the sink, looking—

Looking so good that it makes her head spin all over again.

There’s something in Emily’s eyes that Kelley can’t quite decipher, as she steps towards the sink.

“Need to wash my hands,” she says.

Emily doesn’t move.

“Come on,” Kelley says, pushing forward. “Out of the way.”

She brushes up against Emily, feels the heat coming off Emily’s bare skin as their arms brush with Kelley trying to create space for herself to wash her hands. Emily moves, but only the slightest bit, still pressed close as Kelley twists the tap open, presses against the soap dispenser, and begins to wash her hands.

Emily’s head is turned. “Kell.”

Kelley feels her whole body go tight.

“Yeah?” she says, decidedly not looking up to meet Emily’s gaze.

“Kelley,” Emily says again, and there is something kind of low in her voice, something that makes Kelley’s stomach flip, makes her feel like if she moves, she might not be able to move back from this again—whatever this is. “Turn the tap off.”

Kelley swallows hard.

She does.

She turns the tap off and shakes her hands, droplets of water flying around, hitting the mirror, hitting her forearms. She’s still not turning, and then suddenly, Emily’s got one of Kelley’s hands in hers and she’s pulling—slow but insistent.

And Kelley says, “I didn’t dry them yet.”

Looks up to find Emily’s eyes on her mouth, and—

The door to the bathroom slams open with a loud bang and Emily jumps back so quick that Kelley also stumbles back because of it.

It’s nothing.

It’s just another woman wanting to use the bathroom.

“Let’s go back,” Emily says, quickly. There’s a faint blush on her cheeks that makes Kelley feel like her thoughts will short-circuit if she pays attention to it.

“Yeah,” she says. It sounds breathless. “Let’s.”

:::

Eventually, they get back to the hotel like nothing happened.

Kelley reminds herself, through her drunken hazy, that nothing _did_. Reminds herself that she and Emily are only doing this to do Tobin and Christen a favor—

Tobin and Christen, who are sitting so close to each other in the backseat of the Uber that Kelley almost feels proud.

Proud that it’s working. Proud that it probably won’t be long until they’ll confess their undying love for each other, annoying though that may be. Proud that, when she and Emily came back from the bathroom, they had paused for a second before returning to the table, just to watch the way that Tobin and Christen seemed to have shifted closer together, Tobin smiling softly, and Christen biting on her bottom lip—

She watches Emily now, sitting in the front seat of the Uber, making small talk with the driver, talking about music and sports and whatever.

Kelley can’t really pay attention to the conversation.

She’s feeling—

She doesn’t even know what.

She’s feeling _a lot_.

It’s like Christen knows, because she turns, suddenly, cutting through Kelley’s thoughts as she says softly, “You okay? You’re kind of quiet.”

“Fine,” Kelley says automatically. “Everything’s fine.” But then, because it’s Christen, and because the music is loud, and Tobin, who’s on Christen’s other side, probably won’t be able to hear it, she adds, out of nowhere, “I think I really like her, you know.”

Christen’s smile is kind. “Yeah,” she says, “I could see that tonight.”

Kelley feels shy.

“What about the team?” she mumbles, and she doesn’t really know what she’s saying, doesn’t really know what she’s asking.

She feels drunk and shaky and pushed uncomfortably close to the edges of her emotions—and she doesn’t want to feel any of it, doesn’t even want to _think _any of it.

But here she is, thinking it anyway.

Christen’s expression shifts just a little bit. She doesn’t answer right away, but then, just as Kelley thinks she’s not going to anymore, she says, “Some things might be worth it.”

It sounds shy, too—

Like Christen didn’t want to say it or think it either. Like these sort of things _are_ scary and intense, shaky and vulnerable, and like Christen really knows that. Probably better than anyone else.

Kelley grabs Christen’s hand, mumbles distractedly, “Don’t let Tobin get a nose piercing for you.”

Christen laughs, blushes, opens her mouth to say something, probably protest, emphasize again that the girl didn’t even have a nose piercing—

But they’re pulling up to the hotel before they can really get into it.

Kelley feels a little bit lighter, though.

:::

“Thought you were supposed to be dating me,” Emily says as they make it into the hotel, Christen and Tobin a few steps behind them. “I’m surprised Tobin didn’t actually throw a jealous fit when you were holding her girlfriend’s hand in the back of the Uber.”

Kelley laughs, wraps her arm around Emily’s waist. “Oh, I’m sorry, baby. Are _you _feeling jealous?”

It falls from her mouth so easily, the words smooth and quick. She’s not a hundred percent sure with the poor hotel lobby lighting, but it looks like Emily’s cheeks are slightly more flushed than before.

Still, Emily wraps her arm easily around Kelley’s shoulder as she says, “No reason to get jealous when I know you’re mine at the end of the day, honey.”

Kelley laughs, breathes in deep; Emily’s eucalyptus shampoo and the cold outside air on her jacket and something warm and dizzying—

They ride the elevator up to their floors, together with Tobin and Christen, and then Tobin has to get off at the fourteenth floor, while Emily, Christen and Kelley are all on the fifteenth.

She wraps her arms around Christen first, pressing a hesitant kiss to Christen’s cheek, which is annoyingly cute and makes Kelley want to melt and scream at the same time.

Thankfully, the whole thing turns comical real quick when Tobin hugs Emily and Em is the one pressing a lingering kiss to Tobin’s cheek.

“Fuck off, Son,” Tobin mumbles, but she’s grinning as she hugs Kelley, and Kelley thinks that all in all, they’ve had a really good night together, the four of them.

Kelley is next, her and Mal’s room being on the left side of the floor, while Emily and Christen are on the right. She hugs them both quickly, trying not to make a big deal of it. She does catch sight of Emily’s face, right before she turns the corner; this soft little smile on her face, eyes still sparkling, her hand half up in an unnecessary kind of wave—

It makes Kelley’s heart speed up all over again.

:::

She’s curled up in bed, almost asleep already, when her phone buzzes on her nightstand.

The Instagram notification is bright against the darkness of the room, and for a second Kelley wants to ignore it, but then the words _emilysonnett_ _has tagged you in a post_ register, and suddenly she feels wide awake again.

Christen had taken the photo when they were leaving the bar, right before they got in the Uber. Kelley’s got her arm wrapped around Emily’s waist. She’s looking away, laughing at something that Tobin was saying off camera, but Emily—

Emily is looking directly at Kelley.

It makes her lose her breath; the way Emily’s whole expression is radiating light, her eyes bright, her smile so fucking charming, her eyes on Kelley like she can’t—

Like she can’t look away.

When she reads the caption, there’s a rush of heat down her body: _date night or drinks with friends?_

Her thumb hovers over the screen. It only takes her a second, and then she is tapping down, liking the photo. The comments are rushing in, just like last time, and maybe Kelley will scroll through them in the morning when she’s still in bed. Maybe she’ll text Christen and ask for the picture so she can make it her background. Maybe she’ll throw on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt and make her way down to breakfast, wondering if she could still get Emily to stare at her like that if she tried.

Now, though—

Now, Kelley’s thumb is hovering over the screen of her phone.

She types the comment before she can stop herself.

:::

_with you looking that good? date night for sure._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> What are we thinking? What do we love? What do we hate? What do we want to see in the next chapter?
> 
> If you want to come talk to me about how ridiculous these two are, hit me up on tumblr: e-lec-tric-in-di-go.


	3. III.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: 
> 
> Whoops this got a little out of control. Get ready for Feelings™

There’s no reason for them to be doing this—Kelley knows that.

Camp has finished, and suddenly she’s faced with a rare two week stretch before she has to play her next club game. Everyone has disappeared off to everywhere; Tobin back to Portland, Christen to her family in L.A., and Emily—

Well, that’s the thing.

There’s no reason for them to be doing this. No reason to play matchmaker when the people you’re trying to match are not even in the same state. No reason to keep up whatever was going on between her and Emily when they weren’t even going to see each other for, like, a month. 

But then—

Flights had been cheap and Emily had changed hers last minute, despite the fact that Portland has to play in a week’s time already. Apparently she had thought it would be worth it to spend a few days at home—and all of a sudden, they’re here, both of them, in Georgia. And still, Kelley’s knows, rationally, that there’s no reason at all to continue whatever they were doing.

But then again—

“People are really buying into this,” Kelley says. “We’d be dumb to not exploit it.”

Turns out they’re kind of a hit on social media.

Every time Kelley even hints at something that could be related to Emily, people seem to lose their minds. The likes on her posts keeps sky-rocketing, the comment section is all over the place. It seems like there’s a whole subculture on the internet that is very invested in seeing how things are playing out between them. A whole subculture on the internet that doesn’t seem to realize it’s fake. 

Across from her, Emily smiles, then yawns.

They’re at this nice little coffee place in Kelley’s hometown. She had begged Emily to make the drive over, and for some reason, Emily had done it without any real sort of protest—which means that Kelley is paying for coffee and trying not to notice that Emily looks kind of cute when she’s sleepy.

Kelley’s hand twitches on her phone, and Emily grins, poses with her coffee cup like it’s a trophy and says, “Try to get my good angle.”

Holding her phone up, Kelley has to bite down her bottom lip to stop herself from blurting out something ridiculous like _all your angles are good angles_—which, what the fuck.

Instead, she says, “Try to wear something other than a hoodie next time.”

Emily laughs and Kelley takes the picture the same second.

She posts it to her story with a sun and coffee emoji in the top right corner. And then, for good, measure she tags Emily and adds a tiny little pink heart behind her name.

“This is fun.” 

The corner of Emily’s mouth curls up. “What? Posting stuff on Instagram?”

“Dating you.”

Kelley says it before she can stop herself, and the second the words leave her mouth, she feels like she slipped up—

Emily’s eyes are really blue in the early sunlight, and she’s looking like she’s about to say something, but Kelley beats her to it.

“_Fake dating_,” she says. “Like, hanging out. I mean, hanging out is fun with you, y-you know?” 

She fumbles a little with her coffee cup, trying to ignore the strange tension in her stomach, the way Emily’s eyebrows are just slightly furrowed now. 

“Right,” Emily says.

Kelley laughs a little nervously, then quickly tries to talk over it. She launches into a story about high school, something fast and witty, something that makes Emily smile at all the funny parts, and it only takes a minute, really, before the conversation is flowing normally again.

They’re just drinking coffee, no big deal, just hanging out. Just—

Kelley feels like she does before big games; slightly tense and really excited at the same time. As if she could run and run and run, and not get tired. Every time she looks up, Emily is already looking back, and there’s this weird little spike in tension that hits Kelley _again and again_, because she doesn’t really know how to deal with it. 

They’re friends.

Just friends.

She doesn’t know why this weird fucking feeling behind her navel keeps _tugging_ at her. 

“Hey,” she says, thinking of something, of anything to make it go away. “Want to do something fun?”

Emily grins.

:::

“This seems illegal.”

“I have done this so many times.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s allowed.”

“Losers are free to stay behind, Em.”

Emily scoffs and Kelley smirks, right before taking a little run, jumping up against the gate and swinging her leg over to the other side easily. She lands with a thud. When she turns back, Emily is looking at Kelley in a way that rushes a wave of pride through Kelley’s chest.

She puts a hand on her hip. “You coming or not?”

“I swear this is illegal,” Emily says. “If we’re kicked off the national team because of this, I’m never speaking to you again.”

“You wouldn’t last a week.”

“Try me—here, catch.” Emily throws the soccer ball that she got from the trunk of her car over the gate. It bounces on the grass. Kelley kicks it up, balances it on her foot, while Emily pushes herself up and swings her body over the gate. She lands so close to Kelley that she immediately loses her balance and drops the ball.

Emily charges toward it, and just like that, all the tension she’d been feeling before, leaves Kelley’s body.

They play one vs one on Kelley’s old high school soccer pitch until they’re both sweaty and out of breath, and then they collapse, side by side, on their backs. Kelley feels loose, more relaxed—like her body has opened up, like the space between them is smaller now.

“What were you like in school?” she asks, aiming the words at the sky.

Emily makes a sound that sounds a bit like a scoff. “What kind of psychological question is that?”

“Just curious.” Kelley’s chest is going up and down with her breathing. She spreads her arms a little wider. “Can’t imagine you in school.”

Emily laughs. “Geez, thanks.”

“No, I mean—” Kelley feels like reaching over and pushing Emily’s arm, but she doesn’t. She does turn her head, looks right at Emily when she adds, “I don’t know, I just think you must have been pretty cool. Like, I imagine you as one of the cool kids, that’s all.”

“Oh, you’re saying you think I’m cool?” Emily smirks.

They’re looking at each other, space between them so small that Kelley can feel that Emily is slightly out of breath against her own lips.

She says, “Come on, tell me.”

At that, Emily’s expression changes. For a second, Kelley thinks she’s going to look away, that she’s going to brush it off with another joke. But maybe playing soccer for a bit has also loosened something in Emily, because she doesn’t look away. She says, “I wasn’t, actually.”

“What?”

“One of the cool kids.”

Kelley stays silent. The grass feels ticklish against her bare arm, against the side of her neck. She doesn’t want to move, though. She wants to stay right here, sweaty and warm, lying on the soccer field she used to play on when she was in school, with Emily close like this.

“Em,” she says, then, because Emily still hasn’t said anything.

“What do you want me to say?” Emily fires back, voice just the slightest bit sharp. “There’s nothing to it. Really. I just—I only ever really liked soccer and I really wanted to play on the national team. I dressed in hoodies and shorts. That’s it, Kell.” She laughs a little. “Not that different from now.”

“But now you _are _cool,” Kelley says, and again, it escapes her before she can really hold it back. “You’re, like, the coolest person I know.”

Only then, does Emily look away.

She rolls onto her back and stares up at the sky, and Kelley can see the way her throat bobs when she swallows, can see the way Emily’s fingers inch down to play with the hem of her hoodie. She doesn’t look at Kelley, but it still feels close when she says, “Stopped caring as much, I think.”

The words are nonchalant. Any other time, Kelley might have thought it sounded dismissive.

But now—

“About what?” she asks.

Emily shrugs. “People’s opinions. I mean, I didn’t change that much. I’m really not that different from how I was in school.” She pauses for just a second. “But, I feel, like—like, now I don’t care as much about what other people think about it. And—” She inhales sharply, then says, almost like it’s less important, “I don’t know. Just feel like I like who I am now a little bit more than I did when I was in school.” 

And _that_—

That hits something deep inside of Kelley’s chest.

Something that makes her simultaneously want to ask a million questions and give Emily some space. Emily says it, and it seems like suddenly there is so much there, like it was actually the most important thing, like there are so many layers to that sentence and—

“Kell,” Emily says, turning to look at her again.

“Yeah?” Kelley says.

Emily takes a breath. “I’m not—I’m not really good at talking about this sort of stuff—”

Kelley looks at her, can see the nervous pull of Emily’s mouth, the way her eyelashes are twitching slightly—that’s how close they are. She knows what Emily is really saying, is really asking.

“Maybe some other time?” she says.

Emily nods. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Okay.”

Emily sort of smiles.

Kelley wants to touch her, suddenly and impulsively—wants to reach other to brush her fingers over Emily’s cheek, down her arm, anywhere.

“Hey,” she says instead, smiling widely. “For the record. I like who you are now a whole fucking lot, okay?”

Emily laughs, sparkle back in her eyes.

“I know,” she says. “You can’t seem to stop wanting to date me.”

Kelley bites down on her bottom lip to stop her smile.

Emily reaches to grab her phone from the pocket of her shorts. She angles the camera so that they’re both in the shot.

:::

**emilysonnett: **_I like you a whole fucking lot. @kelleyohara _

:::

Christen calls in the evening.

Kelley is at home, curled up on the couch when her phone starts ringing. When she picks up, Christen doesn’t even say hello.

Instead, she starts with, “For the love of God, can you two stop being so into each other?”

It takes Kelley a moment.

“What?” she says, then, still confused.

“You and Sonnett,” Christen says. “The whole Instagram thing. I feel like I’m actually _in _your relationship.”

_Oh. _

It makes Kelley’s skin feel hot.

She takes too long to think of a reply, too long to decide if she wants to deflect, or go along with it; too long to weigh whether it’s worth to sink back into the couch and play at being in love and tell Christen everything about today.

(How much fun they’re having; driving through town, playing soccer. All the banter, the jokes. The way Emily’s ears turn a little bit red when Kelley compliments her. How she’s cool, like really cool. Like—how Kelley knows that people think that _she _is cool, but that can only be possible when they haven’t met Emily yet. How every time someone comments something on Instagram about how good they look together, it makes Kelley’s stomach flip. How Emily is so casually gorgeous, so pretty in a sort of noncommittal way. How the whole combination of that is totally driving Kelley to the point of insanity—)

Christen is talking over her thoughts.

“—obviously seeing both of you be so cheesy all the time is kind of nauseating. You’re very _grossly _in love with each other—” 

“Hey!” Kelley cuts in. “You’re one to talk.”

That shuts Christen up for a second. “What are you—”

Kelley makes a point of coughing really loudly around the word _Tobin_, and smirks when she can hear Christen start to stutter instantly on the other side of the line.

“That’s not even—_what_—it’s so not… not the same thing… Tobin and I are friends—she’s—we’re just—”

“Oh, you’re friends?” Kelley teases. “You’re just really good friends?”

“Stop…” Christen whines. “We are!”

Kelley laughs. “Right,” she shoots back. “That’s why you’re always blushing when she makes you smile with her dumb jokes. Why you’ve suddenly taken an interest in _basketball_. Why you’re always doing that flirty little thing with your bottom lip that has been giving you away since freshman year of college!”

Christen laughs, tries to protest.

Kelley says, “I’ve literally seen you stumbling through this stuff since you were eighteen, Press.”

It makes Christen laugh even louder, and then she fires back, “At least I’m not posting everything all over social media!”

“You’re just jealous.” Kelley sinks back further in the couch, smiling so hard that her cheeks hurt.

Christen’s voice is a little softer when she says, “Kell, I missed this.” 

“What?”

“This. Talking like we’re in college.”

Kelley’s smile turns soft. “Me too.”

Christen is silent for another moment, and then she says. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“Is it worth it?”

Briefly, Kelley feels like pretending she doesn’t understand the question, like she can’t hear the sudden edge of shyness in Christen’s voice, feels like pretending that it doesn’t matter, that none of it matters—

(She thinks of the sunlight today; how they’d gone for ice cream after playing soccer and the way Emily had smirked and then, looking slightly flustered, had smeared vanilla ice cream all across Kelley’s cheekbone like it was nothing; how Kelley had felt hot and burning desire in her stomach; desire to pull Emily closer, to lick the ice cream off her fingers, to see what would happen if she’d try and get Emily to blush for real—)

(She thinks about the word _friends_, the word _teammates_, about all the pressure and never being in the same place; of hotel rooms and schedules; of phone calls and texts and Instagram stories; of taking risks—)

(She thinks about high school soccer pitches and growing up into who you are; about letting someone close enough that they can see you, about falling, falling—)

“Yes,” she says. Her voice is hoarse suddenly. “Yeah, I think it is. It’s worth it when you’re… when you’re…”

She doesn’t say it.

She doesn’t need to.

After a moment, Christen says, “Does it scare you?”

Kelley nods, before realizing that Christen can’t see it. When she tries to speak, it’s like she doesn’t have enough breath.

But it’s Christen—

Christen, who hasn’t mentioned the fact that she’s seen Kelley stumble through all of this since college, too. Who has also seen up close what it’s like when your best friend is trying to figure out whether or not she’s falling in love.

And Christen, from thousands and thousands of miles away, says, “Just tell her. Tell her, anyway.”

:::

She feels like she needs to figure something out.

The phone call with Christen has thrown Kelley off more than she’d like to admit. It feels like, for the longest time, nothing was really going on at all, and suddenly, she’s confused beyond measure.

Can’t fall asleep, can’t really think about anything besides the dumb texts that Emily sends her before she falls asleep, even if it’s only SNL sketches and stupid memes. Can’t stop scrolling through her Instagram feed to look back at their pictures together. Can’t help but wonder when they’re going to hang out again.

Maybe it’s there—this thing that the people who comment on her posts seem to see between them. Kelley is not stupid; she knows that there is _something _going, but still, somehow, it’s like she can’t fully access it. All it does is make her distracted and lose out on sleep. It’s like something is shifting outside of her control, and if only she could just take a minute to slow down and figure it out—

But her family has other plans.

It’s not often that she’s home, so before she can fully process it, she’s already being pulled from one family member to the next, pressured into hanging out with old friends, to go from breakfast to brush to lunch to coffee dates to dinner to drinks, until her days are full with one social engagement after the next, and then—

Suddenly, the week has passed and there is only one evening left before Emily flies back to Portland.

To optimize the last hours, Emily suggests a sleepover.

Like, they’re thirteen.

Kelley says yes.

She is nervous about it in a way that almost makes her feel ashamed.

It’s ridiculous, she tells herself when she is pulling up to Emily’s house. It’s ridiculous to feel this way. They’re going to see each other in two weeks again when Portland plays Utah. They’ve still got tonight. They’re not on any sort of damn _schedule _in the first place—

She knows she needs to stop overthinking this, needs to stop freaking out over nothing, needs to stop acting like she’s going to miss Emily this much, because for God’s sake, they’re just friends.

She’s still thinking about it when Emily opens the door, wearing her hair up in a way that makes Kelley’s eyes linger on her neck and shorts that are just way too fucking _short_.

It’s a good thing that Kelley is carrying two bottles of cheap white wine in a brown paper bag.

She’s going to need them. 

:::

When they’re one and a half bottle in and it’s so late that Emily’s family has gone to bed already, Emily takes her to the back of the yard to sit on the trampoline and look at the stars, and Kelley, not thinking, jokes, “Is this where you take all the girls you want to sleep with?”

Emily’s face goes a little bit red, but she manages to smirk and fire back, “Only my fake girlfriends.”

“Yeah?” Kelley tries to pretend that her heart isn’t racing. “Have you ever had sex on a trampoline?”

It’s the kind of thing that she can only say because she’s tipsy.

Emily licks at her bottom lip, then says, “No, you?”

Kelley doesn’t say anything.

She hasn’t—that’s the answer. But somehow, she doesn’t want to give it. Instead, she just grins at Emily, takes another gulp of wine from the bottle, before handing it over and getting to her feet. She bounces up on the trampoline just a little bit, then wiggles her eyebrows at Emily until Emily, laughing, kicks at Kelley’s legs, and she loses her balance, tumbling forward.

“Hey! Watch it!” Kelley only barely manages to not fall right on top of Emily. “These ankles are very delicate!”

Emily smirks. “Okay, baby, I’ll be gentle.”

She wiggles her eyebrows right back at Kelley, and Kelley—

Kelley is really screwed.

She’s really screwed because she’s on a trampoline in the middle of fucking nowhere, Georgia, and she’s wine drunk and fake dating her teammate, and she’s feeling like she’s about to do something insanely stupid like post the whole thing—the wine and the stars and the night—all over Instagram for everyone to see, or—

Now that there’s finally _no one _to see, accidentally do something worse and kiss Emily.

She takes the bottle back instead, brings it to her lips, then says, “Christen called me.”

Emily glances over. “Yeah?”

Kelley nods, doesn’t know why she’s talking about this, but adds, “She wanted to know if it is worth it.”

It’s dark around them, dark and slightly chilly with the sun having just set. But it’s Georgia so the sky is wide and dotted with stars, and in the little light that they’ve got, Emily’s face looks young and open and _pretty_. “If what is worth it?”

Kelley bites down on her bottom lip. “Everything,” she says after a second. “Being friends and teammates and—” Her voice falters, but she pretends it doesn’t. “She wanted to know if it was worth giving into the risk of it, I guess.”

“What did you say?”

Kelley glances down, ignores to question. Instead, she drinks from the bottle until it’s nearly empty, then hands it to Emily and says, “Do _you_ think it’s worth it?”

As she says it, she notices how close they’re sitting together, how their pinkies are brushing, the way Emily’s eyes go slightly wide at the question like they always do when Kelley hits her with something unexpected, when Kelley puts pressure on something, when she’s feeling flustered—

“I mean,” Emily says, “Sometimes you just have to take the shot right?”

“Yeah, but—” Kelley is having trouble trying to find the right words. “But what if it—what if it ruins everything?”

Emily huffs. “I don’t know. If it ruins everything, then maybe the thing wasn’t that strong to begin with.” She’s suddenly speaking fast, almost like she’s frustrated. “I mean, yeah, if you’re friends and teammates and all these things, it will be difficult, but I don’t know, Kell—everything is going to be difficult, anyway. That’s what we signed up for.” She leans forward. “Everything we do is risks and uncertainty and just trying to do your best, just trying to be good, just trying to win. So, yeah, you might ruin everything, but if you’re in love, if you’re just really fucking in love with someone—”

Kelley kisses her.

It’s impulsive and abrupt—a little too abrupt.

Emily gasps into Kelley’s mouth and jerks back in surprise, her eyes wide, her lips parted, and as far as first kisses go, this isn’t Kelley’s best.

“Sorry—” she chokes out, regret rushing through her veins. “I shouldn’t have—that was the wine—that was—”

Emily is looking at her in a way that makes Kelley’s voice catch in her throat.

She swallows hard, not knowing how to—

And then, Emily leans forward, takes a hold of Kelley’s hoodie, kind of pulls—and they’re kissing again. Emily’s mouth is hot and insistent, and as far as second kisses go, Kelley thinks _holy fuck oh my god_ before she loses the ability to construct coherent thoughts.

She shifts forward, closer—Emily’s hand is still fisted in the fabric of Kelley’s hoodie while the other is sliding up the side of Kelley’s neck. There’s a moment where Kelley doesn’t fully seem to realize it’s happening, despite the fact that she is the one who initiated first, but then Emily kisses her mouth open, kisses her harder, and Kelley moans—

She’s overtaken by sudden need to have everything at once.

One moment, they’re still sitting, and the next, Kelley’s got her hand on Emily’s bare thigh and she’s pushing her back into the trampoline until she’s on top.

Emily tastes of cold evening air and the goddamn cheap wine, and she kisses like she plays soccer—like she’s ready to prove to everyone that she is fucking good at it; insistent and a little wild and confident in an almost effortless way. She kisses like she knows it could be taken away from her any moment.

Kelley pushes her hips down, slides one thigh between Emily’s bare legs, and Emily makes a throaty sort of noise that makes Kelley’s whole body burn.

She’s been wanting to do this for weeks now.

The thought hits her abruptly—

She’s been wanting this for _so long._

Emily’s got her hand against Kelley’s hip, is pushing until Kelley gives in and rolls over—and then, suddenly Kelley is the one on her back, feeling the rough material of the trampoline against her body as Emily kisses her again.

It’s softer, slower, a bit more patient. Kelley’s whole body arches into it involuntarily. She feels like her heart is going to beat itself out of her chest, feels like she’s going to give herself away, feels like she’s falling, like—

Like maybe it’s more than just tension relief, and suddenly—

Suddenly she feels like she can’t breathe.

It’s like a hand pressed to her throat, sudden and harsh, almost choking her, all because Emily kisses her like it matters and Kelley’s body is so _responsive _to it, and all it can really mean is that she’s—

She pushes Emily off.

Just as quickly as it began, there’s suddenly space between them.

Kelley sits up, and Emily’s eyes are wide, her lips trembling a little bit as she moves backwards, looks at Kelley like she’s suddenly scared to touch her. “Kell, are you—”

“_Fuck_.” Kelley makes a sort of strangled sound. “Wow—that was stupid.”

Emily looks like Kelley has slapped her.

All softness leaves her face instantly, and Kelley, still struggling to breathe, feels pressure behind her eyes, feels her mouth pull like she’s going to cry.

She tries to laugh instead. “Fuck, I’m so drunk. I can’t believe I—that was—God, we’re so dumb, why did we even do that.” She runs a hand through her hair, doesn’t look at Emily when she exhales hard and tries to laugh again. “Wow, Em—no offense, but that was the weirdest kiss I’ve ever had. Like, fuck, this stupid wine—”

She’s going to cry. She’s really—

If she says anything else, she’s going to cry.

She hears herself say, “It was weird, right? Weird, like… like… kissing Lindsey or Christen or—or—Rose_—_” It feels like she can’t breathe. “Made me feel nothing.”

It feels like she’s going to have a panic attack. It feels like she’s going to break down on this fucking trampoline in Emily’s backyard any second, because Emily still hasn’t said anything, and Kelley is _lying—_

(—is doing everything she can to smother the part of her that wants to cry and charge forward and wrap her arms around Emily and hold her really tight and maybe kiss her again—)

Kelley says, “Worst kiss of my life. We should never do that again.”

And Emily finally snaps.

“_Okay_—” she bites out, scoffing. “That’s—okay, _fuck you_, first of all—” Her voice catches and she cuts herself off, turns her face away, before jumping off the trampoline.

She’s walked six strides in the direction of the house, when she spins around again to face Kelley and snaps, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Kelley has never seen her this upset, not even after losing their most important games, not _ever_. “This is—are you actually saying this to me?”

Just like that, Kelley feels all her panic shift to fear.

Fear, because she didn’t mean to make Emily this upset, didn’t mean to make her walk away like this. “Em, wait—I didn’t mean—”

All she wanted to do was play it off like it was nothing, because she needs to _believe _that it was nothing, needs to believe that none of this is really happening, that she hasn’t accidentally fallen in love with her best friend. 

“No, it’s clear what you meant,” Emily cuts it. “I can’t believe—_fuck, _do you seriously not realize what this is for me? What this has been all along for me?”

“I—”

“Do you think—” There are tears in Emily’s eyes now—angry and harsh tears that make Kelley feel like she’s choking on glass. “Do you really think I was pretending to be into you for _Christen and Tobin’s _sake? That I was doing it as some kind of joke? Are you really so self-centered that you haven’t realized that all this time I’ve been—I’ve been—”

Kelley’s whole body is shaking.

Emily shakes her head. “You—you flirt with me all the goddamn time, Kell. _All the time_. And everything that is happening between us is all over the internet because you put it there, because you wanted people to see. We’re not fake dating. We never were.” Emily’s bottom lip is shaking. “And then you kiss me. And it seems like you want it, it seems like you—like it was something that…”

Kelley opens her mouth, tries to speak.

She slides off the trampoline, tries to step up into Emily’s space.

But Emily moves back. “Whatever,” she says. “You can have all your fucking excuses. I don’t want it like this. You can fuck off.”

“_Em._”

“Go home,” Emily says. She turns around. “I’ll see you in Portland.”

:::

Kelley keeps it together as she makes her way around the house, doesn’t break down until she’s in her car.

But then, the second she gives in to her shaky breathing, to the pressure on her throat, she can’t stop.

She has to park along the side of the road, that’s how hard she’s crying.

It’s Christen’s fault, she tries to think. It’s Christen’s fault for being in love with Tobin—for choosing the most impossible person in her life to fall for, and somehow, in all that impossibility, giving Kelley a glimpse of how something like that could work out anyway.

It’s Emily’s fault, she thinks. For going along with her fucking fake dating idea, for working her way under Kelley’s skin so slowly that she barely even realized it, barely even knew she wanted it. Emily’s fault for letting Kelley kill it like this.

It’s her own fault.

It’s her own fault because she hasn’t ever felt like this and doesn’t know how to do it. Because if she’s not immediately good at something, Kelley doesn’t want to learn how to get there. Because she’s so scared of admitting how real it felt that she’d rather lie her way out of it than let herself feel shaken up by Emily’s eyes and her smile and her mouth. 

It’s her own fault for kissing Emily and wanting it this much.

She doesn’t know how she makes it home. She can’t even be bothered to change out of her clothes; she kicks her shoes and jeans off and then climbs into bed in the hoodie she’s been wearing all day. It still smells like Emily’s backyard—but maybe that’s Kelley’s mind playing tricks on her.

When she rolls over and onto her side, her phone—which she hasn’t touched all day—slides out of the front pocket. She grabs it, attaches it to the charger on her nightstand out of habit.

The screen lights up in the dark.

** _emilysonnett _ ** _has tagged you in a post._

It’s from hours ago. It’s from before the fight, the kiss, everything.

Kelley’s fingers are shaking as she opens Instagram.

It’s a sunset picture taken when they were sitting on Emily’s balcony, right before they went out to sit on the trampoline. The sky’s all pretty shades of pink and orange; Emily has angled the camera so that Kelley’s only half in it, not enough to be the center of the picture, but still very much in the shot.

She’s tagged it _georgia sunset baby @kelleyohara_.

It’s not anything out of the ordinary.

It’s not even suggestive in any sort of way.

They’ve been way more obvious in other posts—and still, somehow it’s this one that hits Kelley the hardest.

Her eyes keep going back to the word _baby_, her mind keeps replaying the way Emily said _We’re not fake dating. We never were. _

It’s the middle of the night and Kelley doesn’t know how to interpret the caption of a goddamn Instagram post.

She can still feel Emily’s lips on hers.

She fucked everything up.

:::

(She’s so in love that it hurts.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: 
> 
> Tried to write a light, drama free story for once. Failed. 
> 
> We’re going to need one more chapter to solve this.


	4. IV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Things have to get worse before they can (chaotically) get better.

Portland loses against Chicago two days later.

Kelley watches the game curled up in bed with her headphones on.

Emily, when she walks onto the field, looks pale and tired, and it stings so hard in Kelley’s chest that she almost shuts her laptop right away. But it’s Emily, so Kelley doesn’t take her eyes off the screen for even a moment.

With her breathing high in her throat, she watches the back line fight against Sam Kerr, watches how Emily bloodies her knees in the process of holding off the attack for ninety minutes, and still it’s not enough—any other time, it might have been, but not today. 

The game ends with three goals against and Kelley collapses back onto her bed with tears burning behind her eyes that she tries to blink away as quickly as she can.

She has no right to feel this way.

No right to feel upset and sensitive and hurt—not when she is the person who caused this screwed up situation in the first place. Not when she—

Emily’s expression flashes in front of her eyes; the way she had looked when Kelley had said _worst kiss of my life_, the way she’d flinched when Kelley had tried to step up to her, the way she’d told Kelley to leave—

—and how Kelley, for once, had actually done what Emily wanted, and left.

The only feeling that she has a right to is guilt.

She stares at her phone. 

There’s a string of unanswered messages she’s sent Emily’s way over the past few days. She hasn’t dared to call, too scared that Emily won’t pick up—or worse, that she will pick up and Kelley won’t know how to deal with it. Still, her thumb hovers over the contact, despite knowing that it’s too close to the final whistle for Emily to have already made her way back through the tunnel.

She scrolls up in her contact list, finding Christen’s name instead.

For half a moment, she actually considers calling, actually considers pressing down on Christen’s name and spilling everything into the phone connection; the kiss and the fight and how Kelley has fucked it all up.

But Christen doesn’t know.

No one knows.

She wouldn’t even know how to say it.

_We did it to get you and Tobin together._

She imagines a different version of the truth.

_We did it because I liked it too much to stop._

Christen would just be quiet, would be quiet and let Kelley speak until she’d said it all.

_We did it because first it was fake, it was just a joke, and then I forgot it was fake, and then it got real, and then I lied about it being real, and now it’s neither, not fake and not real, I fucked it up and she’s not speaking to me, and now it’s just nothing._

The stupid thing is that Christen would let her cry. She wouldn’t even get mad. She’d just let Kelley speak and explain and feel—and Kelley doesn’t deserve any of that. Not anymore.

She turns her face into her pillow, tries to smother everything.

:::

They play at home against the Houston Dash.

Kelley leaves Georgia with no replies to any of her messages and dark rings under her eyes that make Laura Harvey scowl at her when she steps onto the field.

Of course, Christen notices right away.

“Is something up with you and Sonny?” she asks tentatively when they’re doing stretches.

Kelley forces herself to smile. “What? No,” she says. “Just haven’t been sleeping well.”

Christen narrows her eyes a bit. “Both of you are awfully quiet on Instagram.”

“Hard to post pictures when you’re not in the same state,” Kelley mumbles.

Christen looks like she’s not quite buying it, but she doesn’t push—and Kelley actually feels like crying all over again. She feels like crying because part of her wishes that Christen _would _push; that she would look closer for just one second and see that the whole fucking thing was made up. That Kelley is only pretending everything is fine, when the truth is that each night before she falls asleep, she scrolls through her own Instagram feed—the flirty comments, the fire emojis they’ve left on each other’s selfies, all the stories—and waits for Emily to text her back.

She wishes that Christen would get really fucking angry at her, that _somebody _would.

During the match, Laura lets her rest and Kelley doesn’t play.

They tie the Dash, 2-2.

She wonders if Emily watched.

:::

There’s about half an hour left before their bus takes off to Portland, and Kelley is busy shoving a pair of back-up cleats into her bag when her phone buzzes against her hip. She’s too distracted, doesn’t bother checking the name lighting up on the screen, just puts it to her ear, and then, Lindsey Horan says, “What the fuck did you do to her.”

Kelley nearly drops her phone.

“Hi—” she starts, but Lindsey has no time for that.

“Look,” she bites out. “I don’t care what stupid excuse you’re going to come up with. I don’t even want to hear it. Son is refusing to tell me the complete truth, and that’s fine, whatever, I don’t need to know, but I’ve never—” Lindsey’s voice goes sharp. “I’ve _never_ seen her like this before, and I know it’s because of you.”

Kelley swallows hard. “Lindsey…”

“No,” Lindsey says. “I said I don’t want to hear it. All I need from you is to not fuck it up any more than you’ve already done. Because believe it or not I care about you. Both of you—even though you’ve done God knows what to make her act this way—”

Kelley, somehow, feels defensive enough to say, “I know, all right! I know I screwed it up. You don’t need to tell me that I—”

“Yes, I do,” Lindsey snaps. “I do, because she hasn’t been sleeping in two weeks and her soccer has been shit because of it, and I don’t know what you are putting her through, but you could have known better. You could have known because she’s always been obvious about it. You were just selfish and refused to see it.”

The protest catches in Kelley’s throat.

She bites down hard on her bottom lip, bites back the tears.

It’s only now that she realizes that Lindsey might be the only person who knows—not the details, clearly, but something for sure.

Some small part of the truth, at least.

“Yeah,” Lindsey says after a moment of silence. “Fucking think about it.”

Kelley’s hands are shaking. She glances at her half open soccer bag. “I need to go,” she mumbles.

Lindsey scoffs. “Of course. Whatever. Just don’t mess up tomorrow’s game. Don’t you dare make it a thing or—”

She’s interrupted by the sound of a door falling shut on Lindsey’s side of the connection. Kelley holds her breath, closes her eyes, can picture her way she has to be standing in the doorway, dressed in mesh shorts and one of her favorite Portland hoodies, the way she must look with her hair down, sleepy and—

“_Who are you talking to_?” Emily says in the background.

Kelley hangs up before she can hear Lindsey’s answer.

:::

Christen keeps texting Tobin for the entire duration of the bus ride.

Kelley has her headphones in and her eyes closed in an attempt to close herself off to it, but still, each time Christen’s phone buzzes, Kelley can feel the way Christen reacts to it—this excited little shift in her seat; the way she giggles lightly at Tobin’s bad sense of humor. And no matter how hard she tries, Kelley can’t help but think about things she shouldn’t think about.

(Lindsey’s words ringing in her ears; that Emily still hasn’t texted her back; what the hell she’s supposed to do when they see each other tomorrow, what she should say, what she shouldn’t say, what—)

“Hey,” Christen says, nudging her knee against Kelley’s.

Kelley opens her eyes. “Hm?”

“I had an idea,” Christen says, smiling. “Well—Tobin had the idea, actually, but I also think it could be fun, so—”

“What is it?” Kelley interrupts, because she’s tired and feeling sensitive, and she really doesn’t want to deal with Tobin and Christen on top of everything else.

“Let’s grab dinner together tonight,” Christen says. “Nothing crazy, what with the game tomorrow. But we were thinking we could hang out, have some fun.” 

Kelley slides a little more down into her seat “What? You, me and Tobin?”

“And Sonnett,” Christen says, frowning a little.

Kelley swallows hard. “Oh, right.”

Christen expression changes a bit.

“No, no—” Kelley rushes. “I mean, I do want to. It’s just… It’s—”

She doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

Christen’s eyes are concerned. “Kell, are you okay?”

It makes Kelley’s throat feel tight. She nods. But then, when Christen doesn’t really take her eyes off of Kelley, she mumbles, “We’re kind of fighting right now.”

“Who?” Christen asks. “You and Son?”

Kelley nods.

She’s scared, for a moment, that Christen is going to ask why. That she’s going to try and get Kelley to talk about it, and the thought makes Kelley’s whole body tense, because she doesn’t know what she’ll say if Christen really asks. She’s so tired and all of her defenses are down and the thing with Emily is making her so upset she can barely breathe—and if Christen asks…

Christen doesn’t ask. She just says, “You know what? I’ll have Tobin text you the address of the place she wanted to check out, and then you can just decide tonight if you want to come with us or not. That okay?”

She gives a sweet, half encouraging smile, and Kelley forces herself to smile back. She closes her eyes again, leans back against the window, and tries to ignore the way her neck hurts, the way her wrists hurt, the way her bottom lip is shaking—

Her phone buzzes from the pocket of her hoodie.

She takes it out, expecting Tobin’s name to light up on her screen.

Instead—

Kelley’s heart nearly give out.

_hi._

Her fingers are shaking as she opens the message to see that Emily is still typing. She can feel her throat go dry as she waits and waits and waits and then Emily’s second message comes in.

_srry that lindsey called u, I told her not to but she never listens_

It’s not what Kelley was expecting at all, especially with how long it took for Emily to type that out.

She hovers her thumb over own keyboard, not really knowing what to say.

She begins to type back that it’s fine, that she doesn’t mind—then deletes it again. Her heart is racing and Emily is talking to her and Kelley doesn’t care about Lindsey, it’s not about Lindsey, not even a little bit.

She tries again, types out _How are you? _before deleting that too because it’s way too formal.

She thinks about how long it took Emily to write one message, a message that is so not about what they should be talking about, and then, against better judgement, she types out, _You’re here _and sends it off.

Emily’s messages come in a little faster this time.

_yea_

_idk let’s just forget about it_

_we’ve got the game tmrw and tobin wants to hang tonight and idk it was stupid anyway _

Kelley is typing, but before she gets the change to send anything, another message comes through.

_really let’s just forget it kell _

Kelley’s inhale is a little shaky. Her mind keeps flicking back and forth on different thoughts; that Emily is really talking to her again, that she is saying that what happened was stupid, that she’s calling Kelley ‘Kell’, and that it feels like—

Like—

A window maybe; some space to do something for once.

She takes another deep breath, then types out, _I’m sorry for how things happened. Do you want to go out with Chris and Tobin tonight? Kinda want to apologize in person._

It takes a while.

Then, Emily sends back: _sure_

It’s not a lot.

It’s barely anything.

But it’s a chance, Kelley thinks. At least it’s a chance. 

:::

She’s self-conscious about how she looks in a way that she usually isn’t.

Any other time, for this kind of dinner place—some hipster, casual, typical Portland hub—she wouldn’t even spend a second thinking about her outfit. But when Christen knocks on Kelley’s hotel room door to ask if she’s ready, Kelley is still busy deciding if her jeans are too tight or not; if she really wants to wear this t-shirt, if she should have her hair up or down, or if it doesn’t even matter because maybe Emily won’t even look, won’t even— 

“Is this okay?” she asks Christen, barely keeping the nerves from her voice. “I mean—not that it matters. I don’t even care. But I’ve never even worn this shirt before and I don’t really know the vibe of the place and—”

Christen grins. “You look great,” she says, running her hand down Kelley’s arm affirmatively, before frowning just a little bit. “Why are you even this stressed?”

“I’m not.” Christen gives her a look and Kelley huffs. “I mean, I don’t know.”

She’s instantly annoyed at Christen’s stupid ability to see right through her.

But Christen grabs her hand and pulls her out of the room. “Come on,” she says. “It’s just dinner. Get out of your head.”

She tries.

She really does.

As they make their way through Portland, Kelley actively tries to think about anything other than the fact that she’s going to see Emily again, that they’re technically still supposed to be dating, that she’s got no idea what that’s going to be like, or how she’s ever going to fix everything she ruined on the trampoline in Emily’s backyard.

By the time they’re at the restaurant, Kelley’s quieted down, unable to make small talk with Christen any longer because she’s just that tense and distracted.

Christen, for her part, also finally seems a little nervous.

She’s running a hand through her hair, checking her reflection in the window of the restaurant, and for a moment, everything inside of Kelley sort of softens, because she’s not the only one trying to work something out here.

“Come on, it’s only dinner.” Kelley grins sort of teasingly. “You know—just a casual dinner with your teammate that you’ve got a secret crush on, the night before your rival soccer teams have to play a game against each other. Get out of your head, Press.” 

“Shut up,” Christen mumbles. “Is this the right place? I don’t know if we’re—”

“It is the right place,” Kelley cuts in. “You spent the entire Uber ride on Google maps. Stop stalling.”

She pushes the door open, forcing herself to be brave. It’s relatively crowded inside, but still, she spots Emily the moment they walk through the door.

Kelley’s palms get warm instantly.

Emily hasn’t seen her yet; she’s in conversation with Tobin, already seated at a table in the back, telling a story with her hands in that eager, enthusiastic way that always makes Kelley smile more than is necessary.

For a second, she stays where she is, just watching, which causes Christen to sort of bump into her—and then Tobin spots them, glancing over Emily’s shoulder, and Christen waves, and Emily turns around, and it feels like a goddamn movie moment because Kelley had told herself to be in control, to seem cool and unaffected, and—

Emily’s eyes are on her right away, and Kelley can feel heat rise up her neck, can feel that she’s blushing—

She glances down, then looks back up, and when she meets Emily’s gaze, everything that she’d been trying to push down the past two weeks, comes rushing back instantly.

There’s something in the way Emily is staring back at her; slightly wary, but still with something under the surface that makes Kelley’s heart beat rapidly. It’s really difficult to look away.

Christen coughs.

“Oh,” Kelley says. “Yeah, uh—”

She rushes towards the table, thinking _fuck fuck fuck_ as Tobin gets up to hug her, warm and strong like always, wrapping her arms around Kelley like she has no choice, before stepping back, her smile changing as she turns to Christen, and Kelley—

She tries to avoid Emily’s eyes, doesn’t know if she’s allowed to touch her, waits too long to make a move, and then eventually just sort of awkwardly reaches out to bump her hand against Emily’s forearm. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Emily’s voice sounds a little hoarse.

Up close like this, Kelley can see just how tired she really looks.

She seems smaller, somehow, and Kelley feels the sting of guilt stab hard into her stomach.

Emily steps back a little bit, and Kelley fights the urge to immediately catch up and close the space, fights the urge to reach out and stroke a fallen strand of Emily’s hair behind her ear.

She wants to lean in close and bury her face in Emily’s neck and breathe in deep; forget about the restaurant, forget about Christen and Tobin, forget about the way she made Emily cry—

(She wants to kiss her; soft and sweet and without any sort of shame.)

Emily leans forward, and Kelley’s heart nearly fucking _stops_—

It’s awkward and quick, just a kiss to her jaw, slightly rushed and misplaced, and Kelley almost jerks back with the shock of it, thinks _what the fuck_—but then it clicks, just it time for her to stop herself from pulling back, just in time for her to realize what Emily is doing, that all she’s doing is holding up their lie.

They’re still dating.

_Fake_ dating.

Her heartbeat is pounding in her ears as she sits down and orders a drink. She’s unable to focus; can’t really tell what Tobin and Christen are discussing, can only feel the way Emily’s knee is almost touching hers, can only think about what it must take for Emily to do this.

To keep things up for _Kelley’s sake_—

To go through with it, even with everything Kelley has fucked up between them—

“Kell—” Tobin’s voice cuts through her racing thoughts. “Everything okay?”

She snaps out of it. “Yeah,” she says quickly. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Just a bit tired from the bus ride.” 

Tobin grins. “Ready to lose tomorrow?”

Kelley, without any real conviction, shoots back, “You wish.”

It should be okay.

Everything should be okay.

Christen is laughing and Tobin’s smile changes at the sound of it, but Kelley feels like she can barely breathe, and Emily is unusually tense besides Kelley, and nothing—

Nothing is okay.

:::

She can’t do it.

Letting Christen convince her to go along with this was a mistake. Sitting next to Emily was a mistake. Not speaking to each other for two weeks was a mistake.

(Kissing her was—)

Kelley is surprised she even makes it to dessert. She hasn’t got a clue what anyone has said all night, feels distanced in a way that is making it so hard to breathe. She’s ordered food without thinking about it. She tries to pay attention to the way Christen is telling a story, and maybe it looks like she’s fine, but she’s—

She’s panicking so much that she’s scared it’s not going to end.

There’s not enough air in the restaurant.

“I’m—” she hears herself say, interrupting Christen without realizing it. “I think I need to go outside for just a sec—”

She’s up on her feet before anyone can say anything, makes her way through the restaurant, past the waiters and the people waiting at the bar, until she reaches the exit.

The outside air is cool to her face.

She walks and walks, and then leans back against the wall, breathing deep.

It’s her own fault.

It’s her own goddamn fault she can’t even make it through a dinner with her best friends, with the girl she’s supposed to pretend to be dating; it’s her own fault because she got herself in this mess and now she can’t pretend anymore, can’t have the real thing either, can’t figure out how to make things better, not even for one night—

“Kell.”

She looks up.

Emily’s still a good ten feet away from her, hands in her pockets.

She’s frowning slightly, and Kelley wants to say something, wants to say _I’m sorry, _wants to say _I don’t want to pretend anymore, _wants to say _I know I ruined it and I know I hurt you and I don’t know how to make it better, _but before she can get to any of it, Emily steps forward and says, “You need to stop.”

Kelley’s throat is tight. “Stop what?”

“Stop making this bigger than it is.”

That shuts Kelley up a little bit.

Emily steps forward. “I’m just saying—” She shrugs. “I’m over it. It’s not a big deal. We had our little thing two weeks ago and now it’s fine. I know you’re freaking out about it but you’re overreacting.”

She refuses to look at Kelley directly.

Kelley’s mouth feels shaky, feels like it’s going to make her cry. “I don’t understand. You said—two weeks ago, you said that—”

“I know.” Emily lets out a noise that sounds a little bit like a laugh. “But whatever. I was also drunk and overreacting.”

“You haven’t slept at all.”

At that, Emily’s expression hardens a little.

“Not everything that Lindsey says is true,” she snaps. “I’m fine.”

Kelley swallows hard. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t know what she’s saying sorry for.

Maybe a little bit for everything.

Emily takes a sharp inhale. “Let’s just get back inside, get it over with. We can fake date for tonight and then break up in two weeks’ time or something, say we couldn’t work it out. Let Tobin and Christen deal with themselves. Get everything back to normal.”

It aches in Kelley’s chest, the way Emily says _normal_.

She bites down on her bottom lip, can’t find it in her to say anything. Her shoulders are trembling a little bit. She wants to agree. She wants to give Emily what she’s asking for, at least this time around.

But—

Emily’s expression changes.

“Hey,” she says, her voice soft, as she moves in closer. “Kell, it’s fine. Really. I’m—I just want things to be okay again. Can’t we—can’t we just forget about it?” 

Kelley still can’t speak.

She looks up, looks right into Emily’s pretty blue eyes, and then Emily’s arms are around her waist, and they’re finally touching for the first time tonight, really touching—with Emily pulling Kelley slowly into the hug, her breathing shaky against the side of Kelley’s neck.

Kelley closes her eyes.

She thinks, _I’m in love with you, _just as Emily says, “We’re fine. We’re still friends.”

Kelley breathes out hard.

“Em,” she says. “Em, I need to—I don’t think you realize that—”

Emily pulls back from the hug, says, “Come on, let’s go back inside. We’re taking too long.”

She’s already moving, not looking back at Kelley as she rushes towards the door of the restaurant.

Kelley’s heartrate spikes. “_Em._”

But Emily is already pulling the door open and stepping inside, and Kelley can just barely keep up, has to fight between the urge to let it go and to take the chance before it slips away, to run after Emily and pull her back, and tell the truth, to say that she’s so damn in love that she barely knows how to deal with it—

She pushes through the door of the restaurant, bumps hard into Emily’s back before she can fully realize what is happening, only to hear Emily says, “Fuck, hold on.”

It takes a second.

Her thoughts are still racing on what she needs to say, but then her gaze follows the direction in which Emily is looking, and—

_Oh_.

Christen’s sliding her hand to the back of Tobin’s neck, just as Tobin leans in close and kisses her softly.

“Fucking finally…” Emily murmurs.

Kelley stands quiet, feels the shift of emotion through her body as she watches Tobin pull back, smiling shyly, watches Christen blush. 

“Oh my god,” she breathes out. “It’s happening.”

Emily shifts next to her. “Do we—”

“No.” Kelley’s hand is on Emily’s arm before she can stop herself. “Give them one second.”

She watches Christen pull Tobin back in by her shirt, connecting their lips again, and Emily grins. “Wow, easy there, Pressy…”

Kelley swats her arm. “Can you believe this?”

Emily turns, looks at her, smiles the first real smile of the evening as she leans in a little closer to Kelley and says, “When they get married, can we tell them we’re the only reason they even got together in the first place?”

It pulls warm in Kelley’s stomach—not just because Emily is close and in her space, but because of the _when_.

“Tobin will deny it to the grave,” she says. “She’ll say Chris fell for her game.” 

Emily snorts. “Tobin doesn’t have any game.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

Emily’s smile widens and they’re just looking at each other, everything somehow softer than it was before. Kelley’s gaze flicks down to Emily’s mouth—she can’t help it.

When she looks up, Emily’s cheeks are red, and she says, “Okay, I think we gave them enough time. Let’s go have some fun with this.”

By the time they make it back to the table, Christen and Tobin are pretending like nothing happened. Still, Tobin’s arm is resting on the back of Christen’s chair and Christen’s looking just the slightest bit flushed.

“Everything okay again, Kell?” Christen says.

“Yeah, sorry, just needed some air,” Kelley says. She pauses slightly, then adds with a smirk, “You two seem to be enjoying dessert.”

Tobin nearly chokes on her water, but Emily grins, and just like that, Kelley feel like she’s being punched in the center of her chest, because for the first time in the entire night, it feels like this could be easy.

It could be easy to go out for dinner with her friends like this, to make jokes at each other’s expense, to make a girl she likes smile like that—

(A girl that looks at Kelley like she is quite possibly the greatest person in the world even when she’s being ridiculous; a girl whose hand she could hold on the way back home from the restaurant if she’d let it happen; a girl she could kiss if she wanted to—)

It could be the easiest thing in the world—

If only Kelley would stop ruining her own chances.

If only she would actually say what she needs to say.

If only she would take the shot for real.

:::

She chickens out.

She tries after dinner, tries to get Emily alone, but she’s completely shaken by the realization that it’s actually up to her and to her alone to change any of this—so she chickens out, takes the Uber back to the hotel together with Christen, feeling nervous and on edge for the whole ride.

She tries again, phone in her hand, when Christen has fallen asleep and Kelley is staring at Emily’s contact info on her screen; she tries to imagine what would happen if she would just type it out in a text. She almost does it—has half of the message already thought out—but then she deletes it all.

They’ve got a game tomorrow.

She needs to chill.

Just because Kelley has finally admitted to herself that she wants this for real, doesn’t mean she gets to bother Emily about it, the night before they’ve got to play against each other. 

She takes a few deep breaths in and out, before falling in a restless sleep. When her alarm goes off, it feels like she’s only slept for a minute—that’s how on edge she is about this.

“Are you going to tell me what is going on or not?”

Kelley looks up from her cup of coffee. “Hm?”

Christen slices her apple in tiny parts, says, “You’ve been so distracted. What is going on?”

Kelley, who is staring at her text thread with Emily and trying to decide if it’s acceptable to confess your feelings for your teammate out of nowhere like this, doesn’t really look up. “Hm? What?”

Christen sighs. “Never mind.”

It’s not until she’s in the Providence Park locker room, that Kelley actually begins to panic a little bit. During warm up, she had almost walked right up to Emily to tell her right there and then. But Laura Harvey had pulled her aside to speak about whether or not Kelley’s ankle could handle being subbed in during the second half—and Emily had only briefly waved at Kelley from the other side of the field.

By now, as she’s lacing up her cleats to actually get ready for the game, she’s switched back and forth between wanting to confess so often in the past twelve hours that it’s beginning to feel a little bit like she’s losing her mind. 

She keeps thinking about Emily in the other locker room.

It’s almost like Kelley can feel that she’s close, which is ridiculous—Kelley doesn’t even believe in any of that stuff. But still, the thought that Emily is only one locker room away, is impossible to shake off.

They’re both right _here_, Kelley keeps thinking.

There are all these things she needs to say and they are both right _here_.

She’s feeling anxious and on edge, and it’s only a barely-formed thought when she laces up her second boot and says to Christen, “Do you know where the Portland locker room is exactly?”

Christen frowns. “What?”

“Their locker room,” Kelley says. “Do you know where it is? Do you think we can get there from here? How much time do we have until kick-off?”

It’s a stupid idea.

Deep down, Kelley knows it’s a stupid idea, and still—

“I think I need to talk to Em for a second.”

Christen’s expression changes instantly. “Kelley,” she says. “What is going on?”

“We faked it.”

Just like that, Kelley has said it—and before she can stop herself, she rambles on, “We faked it the whole time. We only pretended to date because we wanted you and Tobin to get together but then we kissed and it got real and I really fucked I up but I think I can fix it now—I want to fix it, so I—I…”

Christen doesn’t say anything.

Nothing at all.

She’s just staring at Kelley in shock, and suddenly Kelley realizes what she’s said.

“Oh god,” she mumbles. “Fuck—I—”

“You…” Christen starts slowly. “All this time you… Because Tobin and I—” She frowns, suddenly. “But Kell—everyone has been waiting ages for you and Sonnett to get together.”

Kelley’s eyes go wide. “What?”

Christen opens her mouth, ready to reply, but before she can say something, the door of the locker room slams open and Laura Harvey marches in to give them their pre-game speech.

Kelley misses everything.

She’s still thinking about what Christen said as they begin to file out of the locker room and towards the tunnel.

Portland is already more or less lined up.

As they get closer, Kelley catches sight of Emily’s blonde hair. She’s standing between Tobin and Purce, jumping up and down a little bit, hasn’t seen Kelley walk up yet, and suddenly—

Suddenly, Kelley is done with being scared.

“Em—” she says.

They’re not close enough for Emily to hear, but Christen’s hand shoots forward and she grab Kelley’s wrist tightly.

“No,” she says. “No, Kell. Not now.” 

Kelley ignores her.

She walks further into the tunnel, pulls her arm from Christen’s grip.

“Em,” she says again, and this time Emily turns around.

Her expression changes as she sees Kelley. There’s a second where her eyes are bright and her shoulders straighten a bit, and then—Kelley can see it happen—it’s like something a little too familiar hits Emily and she becomes guarded right away.

Kelley steps closer. “Can we—”

“_No_.”

Lindsey steps right in front of Kelley, and Kelley nearly stumbles in her attempt not to knock directly into her.

“Jesus, Horan—”

“This isn’t happening,” Lindsey snaps. “I don’t know what the _hell _you were thinking about saying, but there’s, like, three minutes to kick-off and you to—”

Kelley might get murdered for it later, but she ignores Lindsey.

“Em,” she says, third time now. “Can we talk? I need to say something.”

“It’s not happening! I’m not—”

“_Linds_—” Emily’s voice is a mix of annoyance and embarrassment. “Let her through, come on.”

Kelley’s heart is racing in her throat. She can feel Christen next to her, can feel the way the rest of the girls are slightly turned their way, just a little bit confused. Tobin is looking like she’s not quite sure what is happening, and Emily—

Emily is like a deer in headlights.

She’s biting on her bottom lip, looking just the slightest bit worried, and Kelley says, “I’m sorry.”

Emily’s exhale is shaky. “Kell,” she says. “I said it was fine, I said—”

“No, I know,” Kelley says. “I know you said it was fine, but it’s not.” She takes a breath. “I fucked something up that was really important, and I’m sorry.”

“How about you do this after the game—” Lindsey cuts in. “How about you—”

Kelley pushes Lindsey aside.

She will _definitely_ get murdered for it later, but fuck it—

Just like that, they’re suddenly close, with Emily right in front of her, in her red Portland kit, eyes unsure.

Kelley falters for just a second.

“I, uh—” she starts. “I didn’t—well—” She takes another deep breath. “Em, I really messed it up. I shouldn’t have said what I said on the trampoline—”

“Stop.” Emily glances down, avoids Kelley’s eyes. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m trying to say something.”

“I don’t need to hear it again.” 

Kelley’s throat closes off. “Em…”

“No, really,” Emily says, and it’s nothing but defensiveness and poorly masked hurt, and Kelley’s trying to speak but, but Emily says, “Don’t say it. You were clear, and I don’t want you to—”

“I lied!”

Emily falls silent.

“I was lying,” Kelley says. “After we kissed.”

She can feel the way the confession falls around them—catches the edge of people’s sharp inhales, can feel the shift all around them. Still, she doesn’t even look at anyone else but Emily.

“_Kelley_—” Emily says, and it sounds pained.

“I got scared,” Kelley says. “I kissed you and I thought I messed it up, but then you kissed me back, and I didn’t think it would feel like that, I didn’t think it would be that good, that it would be that hot—” Emily’s eyes go slightly wide. “—and I got scared because it was… it was supposed to be fake, but it felt so real, and then I said all these fucked up things because I was trying to convince myself that it was fake—”

Kelley can see Tobin frown, and she knows she’s, again, saying things she shouldn’t say, not like this, anyway, not in front of everyone—

But she—

She needs to—

“I was lying the whole time,” she convinces breathlessly. “When I said that thing about how it was weird, how it was like… like kissing Lindsey or Christen, or anyone. I was full on lying. Because, believe it or not, I actually kissed Christen once for some stupid dare in college—” She can see Tobin’s eyes go wide. Christen groans. “But it—it wasn’t like that with you at all. Kissing Christen didn’t make me feel like my whole body was burning up. Kissing Christen didn’t make me feel like I never wanted to stop. It didn’t make me want to stay out on a trampoline in Georgia all night. Kissing Christen—”

“Okay, we get the point,” Tobin cuts in sharply.

“Sorry, I mean—” Kelley feels like she’s shaking. Her heart is pounding hard, her palms are sweaty. “Well, you know what I’m saying, right?”

Emily’s cheeks are red and she’s looking at Kelley like she can’t quite believe what is happening, and Kelley has never done this in her life, has never confessed her feelings for someone like this, and it’s—

Well, for one thing, she’s realizing that maybe she shouldn’t talk about girls she kissed in the past.

She takes a breath, tries to be braver. “The point is that everything I said after we kissed was a lie, and now I—now, I want to be honest, because the truth is…” She bites down hard on her bottom lip. “Well, the truth is that I wanted to kiss you so much that I could barely stand it—and I… I still feel that way.”

The corner of Emily’s mouth twitches, and it’s all Kelley needs.

Just the hint of a smile.

That’s all she needs.

“I like you,” she says, pushing through. “I really fucking like you. And I’m so nervous to say it, because I want all of these things that I’ve never wanted with someone before.” Her breath is shaky. “Like, I want to play soccer with you, and kiss you on trampolines, and laugh at all the stupid pranks we pull on people. And I want to make you blush and I want to tell you when I’m proud of you, and I want you all over my Instagram—like, for real, not just because we look good together.”

Lindsey snorts.

Emily is half smiling now, looking so goddamn attractive that Kelley steps the slightest bit closer, and admits, “I want all of it. I want all of it with you. And I know I fucked it up, but the truth is that all this I’ve tried to pretend that it was fake, and I couldn’t. Because it wasn’t.” She looks Emily in the eyes and says, “It was real the whole time. Even when it was fake, it was real—and I’m sorry for only telling you now.”

She exhales slowly.

Emily is smiling softly.

There’s a moment where neither of them say anything, a moment where Kelley can feel her heart speed up even more—nerves and anxiety rushing through her veins—and then Emily says, “So, you want to kiss me?”

“Yeah,” Kelley says. “Like, all the time.”

Emily grins. “All the time? Gross.”

Kelley’s laugh escapes her. “I hate you.”

“Do you?” Emily says. “Do you, though?”

Kelley feels like pushing Emily back against the wall and either punch her or kiss her. She feels like wrapping her arms around Emily and forgetting that everyone else is here. She feels like dragging Emily right out of Providence Park so that Emily can take her home.

But Laura Harvey has other ideas.

Out of nowhere, Kelley is almost pushed into the line formation, forced to step back from Emily.

Christen is still shaking her head, trying to hide her smile. Tobin looks mostly confused, like she’s got no idea what the hell just happened. Lindsey is still glaring at Kelley, but Kelley couldn’t care less.

Emily mouths, “Get ready to lose.”

Kelley mouths back, “Fuck you.”

And Emily has the audacity to wiggle her eyebrows.

:::

They don’t lose.

Neither of them.

The game ends in a tie. Christen lands two goals in the back of the net, and Sinc and Purce each get one as well. Kelley doesn’t get to play any minutes in the end. Laura is still letting her sit this one out, but for once Kelley is fine with it.

She doesn’t think she could take her eyes off Emily if she tried.

When the final whistle sounds, Kelley tries her very best to be patient, she really does. She watches Emily thank the audience, watches her hug the other players, and all the time, Kelley hovers close to the tunnel.

She watches Emily wrap her arms around Tobin and Christen at the same time and say something that makes Christen look shocked and Tobin push Emily’s shoulder. Emily laughs, grinning over her shoulder at Kelley. Tobin leans in close to say something back, and Emily’s smile turns soft. 

Kelley feels nervous in the best way possible.

It takes longer.

Camera teams that need to move out of the way, children that want selfies—

But then, finally, finally, Emily’s hand is on Kelley’s wrist, and she is being pulled back into the tunnel, away from everyone else.

Emily weaves them through the halls of Providence Park, and Kelley can feel her heart race in her chest, can feel her whole body simmer with anticipation.

There’s another door, and another hallway, and Kelley is getting impatient—

“Are you ever going to—” she starts.

Emily spins around and kisses Kelley.

Just like that.

It only takes a second for Kelley to respond.

Emily’s hands are on her hips, and she is being backed into a wall, and Emily is kissing her like she’s not going to stop any time soon. Kelley can’t believe she ever pretended that she didn’t want this.

Emily kisses her deeper, her hand sliding just the slightest bit under Kelley’s sweater, and Kelley nearly bucks into the touch, which makes Emily smirk.

In turn, Kelley pulls harder on Emily’s shirt, trying to get her even closer, but it only makes Emily smile more against Kelley’s lips. “Not like kissing Christen?”

“Shut up,” Kelley says.

Emily kisses her again, licks into Kelley’s mouth a little slower, a little more patient. Kelley can barely hold back a groan when Emily’s fingers press into her hip. Her hands finds Emily’s biceps, sliding down until she can grab a hold of Emily’s wrists, and then, just like that, she pushes her weight forward just a little bit and flips their positions, pressing Emily back against the wall instead. 

Emily makes a noise that sounds a little bit like a moan.

It drives Kelley absolutely crazy.

They make out against the wall of some empty physiotherapy room in Providence Park, and Kelley thinks she’s going to lose her mind.

She pushes her hand up under Emily’s shirt teasingly, and Emily suddenly pulls back, grabs a hold of Kelley’s hand, leaning her head back against the wall before Kelley can go any further.

“_Kell_…” She’s panting hard.

Kelley smirks. “Out of breath already?”

“Hey!” Emily scoffs. “Which one of us just played 90 minutes?”

Kelley drifts her fingers teasingly over Emily’s skin. “Was hoping you’d have better stamina than that…”

Emily bites down on her bottom lip, shaking her head. “I need to shower first.” 

Kelley pretends to pout. “So, you drag me all the way over here, just so you can go back to shower?”

Emily grins. “It’s an open invitation if you want.”

Kelley, for all her bravado in pushing Emily back against the wall, blushes hard at the implication.

She rolls her eyes to play it off, leans in and kisses Emily again, before saying, “Whatever. Just hurry up.”

:::

Emily does not.

She takes her sweet time.

Kelley, as a result, is forced to confront Christen and Tobin alone.

“So,” Tobin says.

“Before you kill me—” Kelley rushes out. “—it was Press’s dare, promise! Sophomore year, and she was told to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, so who else was she going to pick, I can’t help it I’m—”

Tobin kicks a stray soccer ball right in Kelley’s stomach.

She doubles over. “Wow. Unnecessary. I told you, it was only a dare, it was—”

“When were you going to tell us about this dumb idea?” Tobin cuts in, before Kelley can say anything else.

Kelley tries to pretend she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “What dumb idea?”

Christen gives her a pointed look. “Kell, I told her. She knows.”

“Fine.” Kelley sighs. “Maybe it was a little bit dumb. But, hey, it worked, didn’t it? You got together, right? All good in the end.”

Tobin rolls her eyes. Then, she smirks. “To think that all this time you and Son were actually playing yourselves, though. Idiots.”

“Hey!” Kelley says. “You are the idiots, first of all. You and Press have been idiots since 2015. Second of all—” She grins. “I expect honorary speech rights at the wedding.”

Tobin’s face goes red. “That’s not—I’m still mad. I’m—”

Christen brushes her hand over Tobin’s cheek affectionately, and it isn’t even anything, but Tobin softens immediately, smiles at Christen in this stupid, loving way, which Kelley takes as her immediate cue to leave.

She spins around, walks off into the hallway, turns the corner, wondering how much longer she needs to—

“_Ow_.”

She bumps right into Emily.

Kelley feels her whole body go warm. “Hi,” she says.

Emily looks soft and freshly showered. “Hey.”

Suddenly, Kelley feels shy. “Do you, uh—” She clears her throat. “Do you want to get out of here, or… or…”

Emily’s smile is so affectionate that it makes Kelley lose her breath.

“Come on,” Emily says. “Just come with me.”

:::

“Is this where you take all the girls you want to sleep with?”

Kelley says it as a joke, but as soon as the words leave her mouth, as soon as she echoes what she said to Emily two weeks ago, she can feel a rush of feelings through her whole body. It’s like a weird mix between panic and excitement—something so new and yet so familiar.

Emily laughs, then says, just like last time, “Only my fake girlfriends.”

Kelley licks at her bottom lip. “You got a lot of those?”

She’s playing with hem of her sweater, stares up at the sky.

Emily reaches out and grabs Kelley’s hand, and just like that, they’re holding hands. “Nah,” she says. “There was only one, but I’ve kind of been trying to date her for real for a while now.”

Kelley can feel herself blush.

They’re lying on their backs in the middle of the field. Everyone has left already, and Kelley is pretty sure they’re going to get kicked off very soon, too, but for now, she’ll take it. She’ll take the grass and the lights and the feeling of Emily’s thumb drawing lines on the inside of her palm.

“You know,” Kelley says. “You haven’t actually said you like me back.”

Emily laughs. “It’s not obvious?”

Kelley turns to the side, looks at Emily and waits until Emily looks back. “Em.”

Emily’s breathing goes a little uneven. “I like you,” she says, after a second. “I liked you way before I fake liked you.”

It makes Kelley feel dizzy.

She leans forward, brushes her mouth against Emily’s in the softest kiss.

When she pulls back, Emily is blushing, and Kelley—

She wants to—

She wants to never forget.

Her heart is racing when she pulls her phone out of the hoodie of her jacket. She switches to the camera app, still lying on the soccer pitch; she angles the camera just so that Emily’s eyes are blue and close, that her lips are parted and she’s still blushing just a little bit.

Emily laughs. “Oh, we’re doing the Instagram thing again?”

Kelley shakes her head. “It’s not for Instagram.” 

Emily’s smile turns soft. “No?”

“Nope.” Kelley takes the picture, kisses Emily again, whispers right into her mouth, “This is just for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Depending on popular demand, I might or might not write a smutty epilogue to this. Let me know what you thought about this either here or on tumblr: e-lec-tric-in-di-go.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N:
> 
> Let me know what you think of this crazy little thing in the comments!
> 
> Also, hit me up with prompts on tumblr: e-lec-tric-in-di-go 
> 
> I'll be slow with writing them, but I LOVE new ideas!


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